MIT News - Earth and atmospheric sciences - Earthquakes - Geology - Climate - Climate change - Oceanography and ocean engineeringhttps://news.mit.edu/rss/topic/earth-and-atmospheric-sciences
MIT News is dedicated to communicating to the media and the public the news and achievements of the students, faculty, staff and the greater MIT community.enTue, 26 Sep 2017 17:10:01 -0400Johan Rockström: Presenting a framework for preserving Earth’s resiliencehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/johan-rockstrom-framework-for-preserving-earth-resilience-0926
Stockholm Resilience Center executive director and Stockholm University professor speaks at the Environmental Solutions Initiative’s People and the Planet lecture series.Tue, 26 Sep 2017 17:10:01 -0400Stephanie M. McPherson | Environmental Solutions Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/johan-rockstrom-framework-for-preserving-earth-resilience-0926<p>The Earth is entering a new global epoch, and the continuation of humanity as we know it depends on our ability to preserve Earth’s resilience through sustainable actions. That was the take-home message from Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Center and professor of environmental science at Stockholm University. He spoke on Tuesday, Sept. 19 for the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s first People and the Planet lecture of the academic year.</p>
<p>“It’s the narrative of human survival,” Rockström said. “The ability to navigate the future for … at least 9, potentially even 10 billion co-citizens on Earth [by 2050], all with the same right to good lives.”</p>
<p>Rockström is best known for his <a href="https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/" target="_blank">2009 proposal</a> identifying specific limits to Earth’s various systems. He called these limits <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html" target="_blank">planetary boundaries</a> and warned that should we exceed them, we may no longer enjoy the life-sustaining balance between nature and human progress.</p>
<p>The nine boundaries — which include climate change, biodiversity loss, the biogeochemical cycle on Earth, ocean acidification, land use, fresh water availability, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol levels, and chemical pollution — are meant as scientifically determined sustainability guidelines for governments and corporations.</p>
<p>“It is fundamentally about reconnecting the world economy to the biosphere,” says Rockström. “It’s ... such an incredibly fundamental part of our world development and … we are today putting all of this at risk.”</p>
<p>Socioeconomic systems around the world are based on the Earth’s capacity to absorb the impact of humanity. But the growth of that impact has accelerated dramatically, particularly in the time period since the second World War. Sixty-seven percent of vertebrate wildlife species is projected to be extinct by 2020. Fifty percent of the Australian Great Barrier Reef has already died. Changes to the atmosphere render 2 degrees Celsius of warming to the planet a distinct possibility. As planetary boundaries reach their tipping points, the Earth’s ability to recalibrate in response will diminish.</p>
<p>According to Rockström, if we avoid transgressing planetary boundaries we can maintain a semblance of the biosphere balance we enjoyed during the Holocene epoch of Earth history. The Holocene, which began approximately 11,500 years ago at the end of the last ice age, was a Garden of Eden of sorts. The gentle fluctuations in average global temperature allowed humanity to develop agriculture and take advantage of the Earth’s resources in a more organized manner.</p>
<p>“We were … a small world on a big planet,” Rockström said of our Holocene existence. Many experts say we are now at the dawn of the Anthropocene epoch, marked by the start of nuclear testing in the 1950s. It’s the first epoch in Earth’s 4.5 billion years during which humans are the main drivers of change in natural global systems.</p>
<p>Leaving the Holocene means entering the unknown. “The Holocene is the only equilibrium of the planet that we know for certain can support humanity as we know it,” he said. “We have no evidence to suggest that we could morally and ethically support 9.5 billion co-citizens with a minimum standard of good lives [outside of Holocene conditions].”</p>
<p>Despite current political uncertainties, Rockström is hopeful. He sees a path forward in the Carbon Law, the idea of halving carbon emissions every decade. (He laid out a <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6331/1269" target="_blank">decade-by-decade plan</a> to this end in the March 2017 issue of<em> Science.</em>) This can be done on every scale, he said, from governments to businesses to individuals.</p>
<p>This isn’t an unobtainable utopia. John Sterman, the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the&nbsp;MIT&nbsp;Sloan School of Management observed that, “Johan’s work shows clearly that humanity has already overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth. The good news is that we can change this dire situation: More and more governments, companies and individuals are taking action to create, deploy and scale the technologies and policies we need to build a sustainable world in which all can thrive.”</p>
<p>Many governments (including Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden) and businesses (such as clothing retailer <a href="http://hmfoundation.com/focus-area/planet/" target="_blank">H&amp;M</a> and auto manufacturer Volvo) have already adopted the planetary boundaries framework. The use of renewable energy sources is doubling every 5.4 years; continuing that rate of growth is a key strategy to phase out the use of fossil fuels and achieve full decarbonization of the economy by 2050, according to Rockström.</p>
<p>ESI Director John Fernandez shares this vision and suggests a key role for MIT. “The transformative role of technology — the development of low carbon energy supplies, the electrification of cities, the creation of economically viable and effective methods to recover and reuse key materials — this is MIT’s sandbox,” he said. “Much will come not from doom and gloom, but from the excitement that motivates discovery and invention and the accompanying optimism and responsibility about the real possibility for a deeply sustainable world.”</p>
<p>Rockstöm’s lecture ended on an encouraging note. “We’re starting to see signs of planetary stewardship,” he said. “For the first time ever, humanity has a road map for people and planet. … The light at the end of the tunnel is real.”</p>
<p>ESI’s People and the Planet Lecture Series presents individuals and organizations working to advance understanding and action toward a humane and sustainable future. On Nov. 20, the second fall lecture will feature Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.</p>
Johan Rockstrom speaks at the Environmental Solutions Initiative's first People and the Planet lecture of 2017. Photo: Casey AtkinsSpecial events and guest speakers, Climate change, Climate, Energy, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Renewable energy, Environment, Sustainability, Policy, ESI, Earth and atmospheric sciencesDeep waters spiral upward around Antarcticahttps://news.mit.edu/2017/research-explores-deep-waters-spiraling-upward-around-antarctica-0926
Research reveals the upwelling pathways and timescales of deep, overturning waters in the Southern Ocean.Tue, 26 Sep 2017 10:45:01 -0400Lauren Hinkel | Oceans at MIThttps://news.mit.edu/2017/research-explores-deep-waters-spiraling-upward-around-antarctica-0926<p>Since Captain James Cook’s discovery in the 1770s that water encompassed the Earth’s southern latitudes, oceanographers have been studying the Southern Ocean, its&nbsp;physics, and how it interacts with&nbsp;global water circulation and the climate.</p>
<p>Through observations and modeling, scientists have long known that large, deep currents in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans flow southward, converging on Antarctica. After&nbsp;entering the Southern Ocean they overturn — bringing water up from the deeper ocean — before moving back northward at the surface. This overturning completes the global circulation loop, which is important for the oceanic uptake of carbon and heat, the resupply of nutrients for use in biological production, as well as the understanding of how ice shelves&nbsp;melt.</p>
<p>Yet the three-dimensional structure of the pathways that these water particles take to reach the Southern Ocean’s surface mixed layer and their associated timescales was poorly understood until recently. Now&nbsp;researchers have found that deep, relatively-warm water from the three ocean basins enters the Southern Ocean and spirals southeastwards and upwards around Antarctica before reaching the ocean’s mixed layer, where it interacts with the atmosphere.</p>
<p>The research team includes scientists from MIT, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Princeton University, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the&nbsp;Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Washington, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00197-0" target="_blank">study</a>,&nbsp;published in the journal <em>Nature Communications,</em>&nbsp;also reveals that strong eddies, caused by topographical interactions at five locations within the current circling Antarctica, play a major role in this upwelling process. The researchers were additionally able to determine how much water from each ocean basin made it up what they call this&nbsp;“spiral staircase,” and believe this journey happens much quicker than previous estimates suggest.</p>
<p>In the Southern Ocean, strong ocean-atmosphere interactions and eddies largely drive upwelling, researchers have found. Westerly winds circling Antarctica blow cold, carbon-dioxide-rich surface water northward from the continent across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current&nbsp;(ACC). The ACC&nbsp;flows around the northern edge of the Southern Ocean and is not only the world’s strongest current, but also&nbsp;the only major current that circles the globe unimpeded by continents. Much of the&nbsp;cold water is from ice melt, caused by warmer, nutrient-rich waters entering the ACC at depth and gradually upwelling from about 1,000-3,000 meters deep.</p>
<p>Observations of&nbsp;Southern Ocean&nbsp;temperature and salinity provided clues to the structure of this overturning, but it wasn’t until recently that computer models were sophisticated enough&nbsp;to run realistic simulations, allowing researchers to investigate if and how upwelling varies in three-dimensional space and what controls the upwelling structure. To explore these questions, the researchers used three atmosphere-ocean models, capable of capturing critical features of oceanic circulation that occur at small scales. They then followed virtual water particles from where they entered the Southern Ocean around 30 South and between 1,000 and 3,000 meters deep to where they crossed the mixed layer boundary, which was considered to be 200 meters deep. The conditions used in the climate models experiments were fairly consistent with those of the year 2000; these were then run for 200 years in this perpetual state. During this time virtual water particles were released in the models.</p>
<p>“We tracked millions of these particles as they’re upwelling. Then we mapped out their pathways, and we can determine … and separate the volume transport — how much water is being moved — by these currents. So, we’re able to compare how important these different regional pathways are,” says co-author Henri Drake, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), and member of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate. They also noted the time it took the particles to reach the mixed layer as well as locations of enhanced upwelling.</p>
<p>Their analysis revealed that the water parcels tended to flow southward, primarily along western and eastern boundary currents in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans, where they entered the ACC tracking with density surfaces. Interactions of the ACC and eddies around underwater terrain also played an important role in the upwelling process.</p>
<p>“In the deep ocean, water parcels follow density surfaces … which start really deep out where we release the particles and then get shallower as you go south,”&nbsp;Drake says. “So if you have a particle traveling south along the same density surface, it’s going to get higher in the water column, until eventually the density surface intersects with the mixed layer.”</p>
<p>Additionally, five major topographic locations in the ACC —&nbsp;the Southwest Indian Ridge, the Kerguelen Plateau, the Macquarie Ridge, the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge, and the Drake Passage —&nbsp;created areas of turbulence and high kinetic energy, which helped to upwell the majority of the water.</p>
<p>“Eddies are basically these vortices in the Southern Ocean that are really important for transporting waters,” says Drake. “If you don’t have any eddies, the water would probably go around Antarctica and come back at the same latitude. But with eddies, when the particles are traveling in these streamlines, they’re going to get to a place of high eddy kinetic energy and surge south and up to the next streamline.”</p>
<p>Researchers also found that half of the water that reached the mixed layer originated from the Atlantic Ocean, while the Indian and Pacific oceans each contributed approximately&nbsp;a fourth. The majority of these waters crossed this threshold after 28-81 years. In the highest resolution model, this timescale is as much as 10 times faster than previous estimates produced by non-eddying models, which were closer to 150-250 years. This demonstrates&nbsp;that upwelling rates could be critical for Antarctic ice melt with relation to future climate change, says&nbsp;<a href="http://rses.anu.edu.au/people/adele-morrison" target="_blank">Adele Morrison</a>, a co-author at Australian National University who contributed to the work while at Princeton University. The models largely agreed, showing the robustness of the result, she says.</p>
<p>“Scientifically, this is significant, because for a long time we have thought of the upwelling as being primarily driven by the winds, which are pretty much uniform around the Southern Ocean,” says Morrison. “But here we have shown that the structure of the upwelling is really controlled by the under-sea topography and the eddy field.”</p>
<p>John Marshall, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography in EAPS, who was not part of the study, says the reseach confirms that upwelling in the Southern Ocean “is mediated by eddies, but it emphasizes how important eddies are and how localized some of the eddy activity is — so it makes it hard to represent in models that don’t have any eddies.”</p>
<p>“I think the communication timescales might be a bit faster than we thought they were between the interior and the surface,” Marshall says.</p>
<p>The group plans to continue the work, investigating ocean-atmosphere interfaces, water particle trajectories, and the propagation of climate change signals from deep water formation in the Northern Atlantic to the Southern Ocean.</p>
<p>“Our description of the pathways that connect the deep ocean to the surface ocean open the door for future studies to connect the fluid mechanics of the deep ocean to exchanges of heat, carbon, and nutrients at the ocean-atmosphere interface that influence Earth’s climate,” Drake says.</p>
This model illustrates the three-dimensional upward spiral of North Atlantic deep water through the Southern Ocean. Image courtesy of the researchers.School of Science, Climate, Climate change, Computer modeling, EAPS, Fluid dynamics, Ocean science, ResearchTargeted, crowdsourced aid for Mexican earthquake victimshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/manos-a-la-obra-crowdsourcing-aids-mexican-earthquake-victims-0924
MIT team’s online platform links those who need aid with those who can help. (Este artículo está disponible en español.)Sun, 24 Sep 2017 11:00:01 -0400School of Architecture and Planninghttps://news.mit.edu/2017/manos-a-la-obra-crowdsourcing-aids-mexican-earthquake-victims-0924<p><a href="#spanish"><i>Lea este artículo en español.</i></a></p>
<p>On Sept. 21, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Mexico City and the surrounding region, demolishing buildings, killing hundreds, and trapping and injuring many more. More than 3,000 structures were damaged in Mexico City alone, according to news reports.</p>
<p>The disaster galvanized Mexican students in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) to construct a crowdsourcing platform designed to link those in need of help with volunteers best positioned to assist with specific needs.</p>
<p>Using the online platform, <a href="https://buzoherbert.github.io/mapa_ayuda/" target="_blank">Manos a la Obra</a>, affected individuals and volunteers can post requests and offers for various types of aid, such as medical services, shelter, food, and water, as well as their contact information so that they can communicate directly. The information collected by the platform is geolocated and displayed on a map in real-time to allow organizations and individuals the ability to tailor aid responses to each request.</p>
<p>The platform’s capacity to disseminate information quickly and target aid efforts efficiently has led to its adoption by volunteers, civil organizations, and other networks in Mexico. In the first 48 hours after the earthquake, the platform collected over 1,000 aid offers and requests throughout the affected region of Central Mexico and beyond. Aid offers continue to be rapidly organized and publicized, facilitating logistics for aid workers on the ground in Mexico City and the affected area.</p>
<p>The group behind the platform includes graduate students Daniel Heriberto Palencia, Akemi Matsumoto, Ricardo Alvarez, and Carlos Sainz Caccia from DUSP and the MIT Senseable City Lab. The team is now concentrating their efforts on linking the site’s information with volunteers, aid distribution centers, and logistic partners on the ground to deploy aid more quickly.</p>
<p>“We encourage those who would like to support victims in and around Mexico City to visit Manos a la Obra and share the platforms with their networks to ensure their help reaches the right people, at the right time,” says the team.</p>
<p>- - - -&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong><a id="spanish" name="spanish">Ayuda dirigida y crowdsourced para las víctimas del terremoto mexicano</a>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>El 21 de septiembre, un terremoto de magnitud 7,1 golpeó la ciudad de México y la región colindante, demoliendo edificios, matando a más de 250, atrapando e hiriendo a muchos más. Solo en la Cd.de México de 3.000 estructuras fueron dañadas, según informes de prensa.&nbsp;</p>
<p>El desastre galvanizó a estudiantes mexicanos en el Departamento de Estudios Urbanos y Planificación (DUSP) del MIT quienes desarrollaron una plataforma de crowdsourcing diseñada para vincular a aquellos damnificados que necesitan ayuda con voluntarios geográficamente cercanos que ofrecen asistencia específica a sus necesidades.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Usando la plataforma en línea, <a href="http://buzoherbert.github.io/mapa_ayuda/" target="_blank">Manos a la Obra</a>, damnificados y voluntarios pueden publicar solicitudes y ofertas de ayuda de varios tipos, tales como servicios médicos, refugio, comida y agua, así como su información de contacto para que estos puedan comunicarse directamente. La información recogida por la plataforma es geolocalizada y mostrada en un mapa en tiempo real el cual permite a las organizaciones e individuos adaptar las respuestas de ayuda a cada solicitud.&nbsp;</p>
<p>La capacidad de la plataforma para difundir información rápidamente y orientar los esfuerzos de ayuda eficientemente ha llevado a su adopción por voluntarios, organizaciones civiles y otras redes en México. En las primeras 48 horas después del terremoto, la plataforma recolectó más de 1.000 ofertas y solicitudes de ayuda en toda la región afectada del centro del país y más allá. Las ofertas de ayuda continúan organizándose y publicándose rápidamente, facilitando la logística para los trabajadores humanitarios en la Ciudad de México y la zona afectada.&nbsp;</p>
<p>El grupo detrás de la plataforma incluye a los estudiantes de postgrado Daniel Heriberto Palencia, Akemi Matsumoto, Ricardo Alvarez y Carlos Sainz Caccia de DUSP y el MIT Senseable City Lab. El equipo ahora está concentrando sus esfuerzos en vincular la información del sitio con voluntarios, centros de distribución de ayuda y con quienes puedan ofrecer ayuda logística local para desplegar ayuda más rápidamente. &nbsp;</p>
<p>"Pedimos a quienes deseen apoyar a las víctimas en y alrededor de la Ciudad de México a visitar Manos a la Obra y pasar la voz sobre esta herramienta para asegurar que la ayuda llegue a las personas adecuadas, en el momento adecuado,"&nbsp;dice el equipo. &nbsp;</p>
Volunteers and rescuers work at a collapsed building at Colonia Roma, Mexico City. Photo: ProtoplasmaKid/Wikimedia CommonsDisaster response, Natural disasters, Latin America, Mexico, Earthquakes, Urban studies and planning, Crowdsourcing, School of Architecture and PlanningErnest Moniz addresses threats of nuclear weapons and climatehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/ernest-moniz-addresses-threats-nuclear-weapons-and-climate-0922
In MIT’s Compton Lecture, former U.S. energy secretary speaks on global security risks.
Fri, 22 Sep 2017 16:30:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/ernest-moniz-addresses-threats-nuclear-weapons-and-climate-0922<p>Ernest J. Moniz, who in January left his position as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Energy, spoke on Thursday about his long and ongoing history at MIT, and about his current work focusing on two major threats the world faces: nuclear weapons and global climate change, both of which were central to his role in the last administration.</p>
<p>The talk, held before an overflow crowd in MIT’s Huntington Hall, was part of the Institute’s Compton Lecture series that has continued since 1957. President L. Rafael Reif introduced Moniz, who is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems Emeritus and special advisor to the MIT president, and noted that Moniz’ “record of accomplishment that would stand out in any context.” This record includes his years as chair of the Department of Physics, his role as founding head of the MIT Energy Initiative, and his three tours of duty in Washington. Moniz served twice in the Clinton administration and then for four years in the Obama administration, when he was appointed to run the Department of Energy by a 97 to 0 vote in the Senate.</p>
<p>In that post, Moniz said he had the great opportunity of working for a president who “put the clean energy and climate agenda and the nuclear security agenda very high in their set of priorities.” As a result, he was able to play a major role in the achievement of two significant international agreements: the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear pact, both of which were finalized in 2015.</p>
<p>The two global threats that these agreements addressed are very different in nature, he said: Whereas the use of nuclear weapons would be a rapidly devastating event, climate change “is more like a slow-motion train wreck.” Back in 1992, he said, when he began his first stint at the DoE, “it seemed that we were on a path to managing both problems.” That year saw the signing of the Kyoto agreement on climate change, which, he reminded the audience, is a treaty, ratified by the Senate, calling for stabilization of greenhouse gases at a level that is sustainable. “We are committed to that,” he said. In addition, negotiations led to the beginning of drastic reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles.</p>
<p>But the road since then has been far from smooth, and now the Paris Agreement on climate change, which Moniz helped to negotiate on behalf of the U.S., is under threat from the new administration and its energy secretary. “Bluntly, especially from the point of view of a policymaker, in my view it is completely laughable to say that the state of the science is not one on which we should take a prudent approach,” he said, noting that the Paris accord, to which 197 nations all agreed, represented such a prudent approach.</p>
<p>Given the U.S. Congress’s insistence, in passing the Kyoto agreement, that there be full international participation, the consensus reached in Paris represented a significant victory, he said: “This path has led us to where we want to go.”</p>
<p>Under the terms of that agreement, Moniz pointed out, the earliest the U.S. could actually withdraw from it, as the Trump administration has pledged, would be Nov. 4 2020, at the very end of its term.</p>
<p>He pointed out that with a single storm, hurricane Irma, a single company, Florida Power and Light, faced an estimated $4 billion in recovery costs. As such storms increase in intensity in a warming world, he said, “it’s a lot cheaper to mitigate than to adapt later. …There’s no going back.”</p>
<p>“We are going to a low-carbon future,” he added. “It’s clearly in the cards. If we don’t pursue the course, we’ll get to the same place, but it will be a rougher road.”</p>
<p>The transition to that worldwide low-carbon energy future, he said, “means there will be a multi-trillion-dollar market. No matter what you think on the climate side, decreasing our research programs doesn’t make sense.”</p>
<p>As for the threat posed by nuclear weapons, “the risk of a misunderstanding leading to the use of a nuclear weapon is probably higher today than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis,” he said.</p>
<p>To try to mitigate that threat, Moniz joined with former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn at a nonprofit organization called the Nuclear Threat Initiative, where Moniz is now the CEO. The organization advocates for negotiations, modeled on some nuclear weapons reduction programs that worked in the 1980s, to address the threats of weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>One significant accomplishment toward that end, he said, was the nuclear pact that he, along with then-Secretary of State John Kerry, negotiated with Iran. The highly technical agreement, which included meticulously detailed plans for verification measures, was made possible in part by the fact that of the four-person negotiating team – Kerry, Moniz, and their Iranian counterparts – three had PhDs from American universities (two of them from MIT), and all of them were able to negotiate in English without needing translators.</p>
<p>That agreement, he said, with its strong verification, “buys us a decade or 15 years of time, which could be used wisely” to negotiate further. If, instead, this administration fails to certify Iran’s compliance, “even though the IAEA says they are doing everything they are supposed to do, our European friends [who are also party to the agreement] are going to be not happy. That’s one more opportunity to put a wedge between us and our allies.”</p>
<p>As for North Korea, he said, an approach is needed that looks more broadly at the situation rather than just focusing on the nuclear weapons. “We have not had a serious dialog with China; we are not addressing all the issues that China is concerned with,” he said.</p>
<p>“I think that we do need to restart diplomacy. And that does not consist of choosing the most colorful words you can think of. We need to get a framework together that addresses all of our security concerns. … We have got to get back into the business of diplomacy, and then we can get to some progress.”</p>
Professor Ernest Moniz speaks at the 2017 Karl Taylor Compton Lecture, titled “Reducing Global Threats: Climate Change and Nuclear Security.”
Photo: Jake BelcherCompton lecture, Special events and guest speakers, President L. Rafael Reif, Faculty, Energy, Climate change, Nuclear security and policy, Government, Politics, Policy, Technology and societyTechnique spots warning signs of extreme eventshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/technique-spots-warning-signs-climate-aircraft-oceans-0922
Method may help predict hotspots of instability affecting climate, aircraft performance, and ocean circulation.Fri, 22 Sep 2017 13:59:59 -0400Jennifer Chu | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/technique-spots-warning-signs-climate-aircraft-oceans-0922<p>Many extreme events — from a rogue wave that rises up from calm waters, to an &nbsp;instability inside a gas turbine, to the sudden extinction of a previously hardy wildlife species — seem to occur without warning. It’s often impossible to predict when such bursts of instability will strike, particularly in systems with a complex and ever-changing mix of players and pieces.</p>
<p>Now engineers at MIT have devised a framework for identifying key patterns that precede an extreme event. The framework can be applied to a wide range of complicated, multidimensional systems to pick out the warning signs that are most likely to occur in the real world.</p>
<p>“Currently there is no method to explain when these extreme events occur,” says Themistoklis Sapsis, associate professor of mechanical and ocean engineering at MIT. “We have applied this framework to turbulent fluid flows, which are the Holy Grail of extreme events. They’re encountered in climate dynamics in the form of extreme rainfall, in engineering fluid flows such as stresses around an airfoil, and acoustic instabilities inside gas turbines. If we can predict the occurrence of these extreme events, hopefully we can apply some control strategies to avoid them.”</p>
<p>Sapsis and MIT postdoc Mohammad Farazmand have published their results today in the journal <em>Science Advances. </em></p>
<p><strong>Looking past exotic warnings</strong></p>
<p>In predicting extreme events in complex systems, scientists have typically attempted to solve sets of dynamical equations — incredibly complex mathematical formulas that, once solved, can predict the state of a complex system over time.</p>
<p>Researchers can plug into such equations a set of initial conditions, or values for certain variables, and solve the equations under those conditions. If the result yields a state that is considered an extreme event in the system, scientists can conclude that those initial conditions must be a precursor, or warning sign.</p>
<p>Dynamical equations are formulated based on a system’s underlying physics. But Sapsis says that the physics governing many complex systems are often not well-understood and they contain important model errors. Relying on these equations to predict the state of such systems would therefore be unrealistic.</p>
<p>Even in systems where the physics are well-characterized, he says there is a huge number of initial conditions one could plug into associated equations, to yield an equally huge number of possible outcomes. What’s more, the equations, based on theory, might successfully identify an enormous number of precursors for extreme events, but those precursors, or initial states, might not all occur in the real world.</p>
<p>“If we just blindly take the equations and start looking for initial states that evolve to extreme events, there is a high probability we will end up with initial states that are very exotic, meaning they will never ever occur for any practical situation,” Sapsis says. “So equations contain more information than we really need.”</p>
<p>Aside from equations, scientists have also looked through available data on real-world systems to pick out characteristic warning patterns. But by their nature, extreme events occur only rarely, and Sapsis says if one were to rely solely on data, they would need an enormous amount of data, over a long period of time, to be able to identify precursors with any certainty.</p>
<p><strong>Searching for hotspots</strong></p>
<p>The researchers instead developed a general framework, in the form of a computer algorithm, that combines both equations and available data to identify the precursors of extreme events that are most likely to occur in the real world.</p>
<p>“We are looking at the equations for possible states that have very high growth rates and become extreme events, but they are also consistent with data, telling us whether this state has any likelihood of occurring, or if it’s something so exotic that, yes, it will lead to an extreme event, but the probability of it occurring is basically zero,” Sapsis says.</p>
<p>In this way, the framework acts as a sort of sieve, capturing only those precursors that one would actually see in a real-world system.</p>
<p>Sapsis and Farazmand tested their approach on a model of turbulent fluid flow — a prototype system of fluid dynamics that describes a chaotic fluid, such as a plume of cigarette smoke, the airflow around a jet engine, ocean and atmospheric circulation, and even the flow of blood through heart valves and arteries.</p>
<p>“We used the equations describing the system, as well as some basic properties of the system, expressed through data obtained from a small number of numerical simulations, and we came up with precursors which are characteristic signals, telling us before the extreme event starts to develop, that there is something coming up,” Sapsis explains.</p>
<p>They then performed a simulation of a turbulent fluid flow and looked for the precursors that their method predicted. They found the precursors developed into extreme events between 75 and 99 percent of the time, depending on the complexity of the fluid flow they were simulating.</p>
<p>Sapsis says the framework is generalizable enough to apply to a wide range of systems in which extreme events may occur. He plans to apply the technique to scenarios in which fluid flows against a boundary or wall. Examples, he says, are air flows around jet planes, and ocean currents against oil risers.</p>
<p>“This happens in random places around the world, and the question is being able to predict where these vortices or hotspots of extreme events will occur,” Sapsis says. “If you can predict where these things occur, maybe you can develop some control techniques to suppress them.”</p>
<p>This research was supported, in part, by the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Army Research Office.</p>
Engineers at MIT have devised a framework for identifying key patterns that precede an extreme event.Computer modeling, Fluid dynamics, Mechanical engineering, Oceanography and ocean engineering, Climate, Evolution, Oil and gas, Research, School of Engineering, WeatherKerry Emanuel: This year’s hurricanes are a taste of the futurehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/kerry-emanuel-hurricanes-are-taste-future-0921
Climate scientist describes physics behind expected increase in storm strength due to climate change.Thu, 21 Sep 2017 16:30:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/kerry-emanuel-hurricanes-are-taste-future-0921<p>In a detailed talk about the history and the underlying physics of hurricanes and tropical cyclones, MIT Professor Kerry Emanuel yesterday explained why climate change will cause such storms to become much stronger and reach peak intensity further north, heightening their potential impacts on human lives in coming years.</p>
<p>“Climate change, if unimpeded, will greatly increase the probability of extreme events,” such as the three record-breaking hurricanes of recent weeks, he said.</p>
<p>In Houston, Hurricane Harvey, which devastated parts of the Texas coastline and produced more total rainfall than any U.S. hurricane on record, would have been considered a one-in-2,000-years event during the 20th century, according to the best available reconstructions of the past record of such storms, Emanuel said. But in the 21st century, that probability could drop to one in 100 years, given the likely trajectory of climate change conditions. Hurricane Irma, with its record-breaking duration as a Category 5 storm, will go from being a one-in-800-years event in the area of the Caribbean that suffered a direct hit, to a one-in-80-years event by the end of this century, he said.</p>
<p>Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science and co-director of the Lorenz Center at MIT, has long been considered one of the leading researchers on tropical storms including hurricanes and cyclones (which is the name for such storms in the Pacific Ocean), the physical mechanisms that generate them, and the reconstruction of their past frequency and intensity. Ron Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science and director of the Center for Global Change Science, said in introducing Emanuel’s talk, “I can’t think of a better person in the world to address this issue of hurricanes,” including what he called the “2017 hurricane train” with its succession of huge storms.</p>
<p>In fact, although his talk had been titled “What Do Hurricanes Harvey and Irma Portend?” Emanuel pointed out that now there was “a tragic irony in presenting this lecture just hours after another hurricane [Maria] has devastated Puerto Rico.” At such a time, he said, “it is natural to ask if these are just natural events.” Referring to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s recent comments that it was inappropriate to talk about climate change in relation to hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Emanuel wondered aloud “if after 9/11 he would have said that now is not a good time to talk about terrorism?”</p>
<p>Already, over the last four decades, he said, hurricanes and cyclones globally have caused an average of $700 billion in damages annually since 1971. Meanwhile, thanks to population growth and the development of oceanfront property, “the global population exposed to hurricanes has tripled since 1970,” he said.</p>
<p>While hurricanes, like earthquakes and volcanoes, “are part of nature,” Emanuel said, “what we’re talking about are unnatural disasters — disasters we cause by building structures” in places that are inherently vulnerable to such devastating forces.</p>
<p>Because of policies, including the current system of federally provided flood insurance that gives private insurers little motivation to study countermeasures, he said, “we’re going to be having Harveys, Irmas, and Marias as far as the eye can see.”</p>
<p>While much of the news coverage of hurricanes focuses on the powerful winds, which have indeed been a major cause of damage and loss of life in the islands pummeled by Irma and Maria, Emanuel said that overall it is water, not wind, that causes the vast majority of damage from such storms, though most people underestimate the severity of the water impact. To illustrate the point, he showed a short, dramatic video of a hurricane-produced storm surge striking a building. “It is hydrodynamically the same thing as a tsunami,” he explained, as the clip showed water rushing steadily in and quickly engulfing an entire house.</p>
<p>“I wish everyone who lives in zones subject to these storms could see films like this,” he said, adding that the scene depicted was clearly not survivable. “Water is the big killer.”</p>
<p>Part of the difficulty in providing strong, clear documentation of the increasing intensity of hurricanes is the sparsity of the historical records. “Prior to 1943, everything we know about hurricanes on the planet comes from anecdotal accounts,” he said, especially those provided by ships’ logs and news accounts in coastal cities. Still, Emanuel and others have devised a variety of ingenious ways of deducing the hurricane record over much longer periods, using techniques such as taking cores from coastal lagoons to reveal periods when storm surges drove quantities of beach sand far inland, and analyzing the annual rates of shipwrecks over a period of centuries.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the use of new methods, including a technique for deriving wind speed information from the radio signals from GPS navigational satellites, are starting to provide an unprecedented degree of detail of the internal dynamics of these storms, which should enable researchers to continue to refine their models and may ultimately allow for more accurate forecasting of hurricanes. While projecting of hurricane tracks has already improved greatly, he said, the ability to predict the strength of coming storms is not yet as good.</p>
<p>Emanuel said his calculations of the physics behind the formation and growth of hurricanes indicate that the storms’ strength will continue to increase as the climate warms, but that there are inherent limits to that growth. At some point the maximum size of such storms will begin to level off, he said.</p>
<p>But those limits are still far off. For the near term, Emanuel said that U.S. rainfall events as intense as that produced by hurricane Harvey, which had about a 1 percent annual likelihood in the 1990s, has already increased in likelihood to about 6 percent annually, and by 2090 could be about 18 percent.</p>
Kerry Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science and co-director of the Lorenz Center at MITPhoto: Helen HillSpecial events and guest speakers, Faculty, Climate change, Energy, Policy, Politics, Sustainability, Research, EAPS, Government, School of Science, Global Warming, Earth and atmospheric sciencesProjects make inroads on global food and water challengeshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/j-wafs-global-food-and-water-challenges-0921
MIT researchers supported by J-WAFS present results of their work on food and water security.Thu, 21 Sep 2017 10:30:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/j-wafs-global-food-and-water-challenges-0921<p>With goals that include finding better ways to purify and desalinate water, improving fertilizer production, and preventing food contamination, nearly two dozen research teams presented updates on their work at a day-long event on Sept. 15. The workshop featured the recipients of grants from the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS) program at MIT.</p>
<p>John H. Lienhard V, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Food and the director of J-WAFS, introduced the workshop by reporting that the program has received and funded grant proposals from all five of MIT’s schools, provided 24 seed grants and nine “Solutions” commercialization grants, and attracted industrial partners including the $4 billion water technology company Xylem.</p>
<p>J-WAFS has been awarding seed grants since its founding in 2014. The reports at the workshop included presentations on work that is just getting started under the latest grants, as well as progress reports from grants awarded over the past three years.</p>
<p>Among the newly awarded grants, three relate to improving water supplies for drinking and irrigation. Two others involve ways of providing low-cost, locally sourced fertilizers for crop production, and one is for a method to grow algae in bioreactors for use as animal feed or feedstock for biofuels.</p>
<p>Among the new water sector projects is one by Gail E. Kendall Professor of Mechanical Engineering Evelyn Wang and chemistry professor Mircea Dinca, who are developing a practical, low-cost device to extract potable water directly from the air, even in low-humidity regions. This project builds on technology <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2017/MOF-device-harvests-fresh-water-from-air-0414">previously developed</a> in Wang’s lab and potentially could triple or quadruple the water output of the previous version, Wang said.</p>
<p>Another, led by Stephen Graves, the Abraham J. Siegel Professor of Management Science at the Sloan School of Management, and Bish Sanyal, the Ford International Professor of Urban Development in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, will focus on agricultural extension services in Senegal and why the current services do not reach small farmers. This research will probe to what extent private firms with knowledge of irrigation technology can supplement public efforts.&nbsp; In particular, the research will analyze the current barriers to privately provided irrigation and identify ways in which the benefits of such irrigation practices can be channeled toward small firms.</p>
<p>The fertilizer projects included a concept for deriving potassium fertilizer from feldspar, a mineral that is abundant in Africa and other regions, instead of importing such fertilizers at high cost. The idea is being developed by Associate Professor Antoine Allanore of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.</p>
<p>Another project, led by Karthish Manthiram, the Warren K. Lewis Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering, seeks to develop an electrochemical method for producing nitrogen fertilizer using smaller, lower-cost systems than the huge industrial facilities currently used for such production.</p>
<p>“In sub-Saharan Africa, one of the major factors holding back a ‘green revolution’ is a lack of fertilizer use,” said Davide Ciceri, a research scientist on Allanore’s research team. These projects could help to address that lack and increase productivity on farms in Africa, which presently lag far behind those of other continents. “Africa has the lowest yields in the world and the lowest nitrogen fertilizer use,” Manthiram said.</p>
<p>Among the projects nearing the end of their two-year grant term was one that aims to entirely eliminate the need for nitrogen fertilizers, in this case by using biological engineering to create cereal grain species capable of producing their own fertilizer, as some leguminous plants already do. This project, led by professor of biological engineering Christopher Voigt, received a second J-WAFS seed grant this year to further develop the work.</p>
<p>Another concluding project, led by professors Noelle Selin of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and Valerie Karplus, the Class of 1943 Career Development Assistant Professor&nbsp;of Global Economics and Management, examined the prevalence of mercury pollution of rice in China and its correlation with emissions from potential contributing sources such as coal plants. These results could help bring about policy changes that focus on both legacy soil contamination and future emissions from the power sector.</p>
<p>Other projects studied ways of using climate change projections to help guide water and agriculture policy in the developing world, and opportunities for increasing food production in these areas. J-WAFS-supported researchers are also studying water systems, including how water percolates into the soil under different conditions — a crucial factor for the recharging of aquifers. Others are investigating how to detect and remediate various sources of pollution in water systems, and ways of detecting specific kinds of pathogens in food, fish, and aquaculture systems, and throughout global food supply chains. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Principal investigators of concluding projects reported that their seed grants have helped them to secure substantial follow-on funding, including a multimillion dollar award for a project on food safety and supply chains, led by MIT Sloan School of Management professors Retsef Levi, Tauhid Zaman, and Yanchong Zheng.</p>
<p>The J-WAFS program funds work in both the developing and developed worlds, Lienhard said. Its researchers have been studying not just new technologies but also the social, economic, and political factors needed to allow such improvements to move toward widespread implementation. “It isn’t enough to have a great invention that works in a lab here in Cambridge. It has to work on site,” he said.</p>
<p>The program was “formed to catalyze research around MIT in the areas of water and food,” Lienhard said. “We’re really interested to see how we can bring the unique strengths of the Institute, in technology and science and business innovation and urban planning and social science, to bear on the urgent challenges that we face around water and food, going into the future.”</p>
<p>“We’ve gotten a lot of great proposals, and we don’t have enough money to fund them all,” he said. “But we’re doing our best to make the money go as far as we can.” J-WAFS will issue a new call for seed research proposals to the MIT community this fall.</p>
Erica James, associate professor of medical anthropology and urban studies in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, co-presents with Dennis McLaughlin, H.M. King Bhumibol Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (not pictured) on the results of their research project, Leverage Points: Opportunities for Increasing Food Production in Developing Countries, funded by a 2015 J-WAFS seed grant.Photo: Lisa AbitbolResearch, Grants, Funding, Chemical engineering, Mechanical engineering, Urban studies and planning, DMSE, Business and management, Climate change, Supply chains, Technology and society, Sustainability, Solar, Pollution, Materials Science and Engineering, Global Warming, Environment, Desalination, Developing countries, Design, Chemistry, Africa, School of Engineering, School of Science, Sloan School of Management, School of Architecture and Planning, Biological engineering, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS)Mathematics predicts a sixth mass extinctionhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mathematics-predicts-sixth-mass-extinction-0920
By 2100, oceans may hold enough carbon to launch mass extermination of species in future millennia.Wed, 20 Sep 2017 14:00:00 -0400Jennifer Chu | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mathematics-predicts-sixth-mass-extinction-0920<p>In the past 540 million years, the Earth has endured five mass extinction events, each involving processes that upended the normal cycling of carbon through the atmosphere and oceans. These globally fatal perturbations in carbon each unfolded over thousands to millions of years, and are coincident with the widespread extermination of marine species around the world.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The question for many scientists is whether the carbon cycle is now experiencing a significant jolt that could tip the planet toward a sixth mass extinction. In the modern era, carbon dioxide emissions have risen steadily since the 19th century, but deciphering whether this recent spike in carbon could lead to mass extinction has been challenging. That’s mainly because it’s difficult to relate ancient carbon anomalies, occurring over thousands to millions of years, to today’s disruptions, which have taken place over just a little more than a century.</p>
<p>Now Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and co-director of MIT’s Lorenz Center, has analyzed significant changes in the carbon cycle over the last 540 million years, including the five mass extinction events. He has identified “thresholds of catastrophe” in the carbon cycle that, if exceeded, would lead to an unstable environment, and ultimately, mass extinction.</p>
<p>In a paper published today in <em>Science Advances</em>, he proposes that mass extinction occurs if one of two thresholds are crossed: For changes in the carbon cycle that occur over long timescales, extinctions will follow if those changes occur at rates faster than global ecosystems can adapt. For carbon perturbations that take place over shorter timescales, the pace of carbon-cycle changes will not matter; instead, the size or magnitude of the change will determine the likelihood of an extinction event.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Taking this reasoning forward in time, Rothman predicts that, given the recent rise in carbon dioxide emissions over a relatively short timescale, a sixth extinction will depend on whether a critical amount of carbon is added to the oceans. That amount, he calculates, is about 310 gigatons, which he estimates to be roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon that human activities will have added to the world’s oceans by the year 2100.</p>
<p>Does this mean that mass extinction will soon follow at the turn of the century? Rothman says it would take some time — about 10,000 years — for such ecological disasters to play out. However, he says that by 2100 the world may have tipped into “unknown territory.”</p>
<p>“This is not saying that disaster occurs the next day,” Rothman says. “It’s saying that, if left unchecked, the carbon cycle would move into a realm which would be no longer stable, and would behave in a way that would be difficult to predict. In the geologic past, this type of behavior is associated with mass extinction.”</p>
<p><strong>History follows theory</strong></p>
<p>Rothman had previously done work on the end-Permian extinction, the most severe extinction in Earth’s history, in which a massive pulse of carbon through the Earth’s system was involved in wiping out more than 95 percent of marine species worldwide. Since then, conversations with colleagues spurred him to consider the likelihood of a sixth extinction, raising an essential question:</p>
<p>“How can you really compare these great events in the geologic past, which occur over such vast timescales, to what’s going on today, which is centuries at the longest?” Rothman says. “So I sat down one summer day and tried to think about how one might go about this systematically.”</p>
<p>He eventually derived a simple mathematical formula based on basic physical principles that relates the critical rate and magnitude of change in the carbon cycle to the timescale that separates fast from slow change. He hypothesized that this formula should predict whether mass extinction, or some other sort of global catastrophe, should occur.</p>
<p>Rothman then asked whether history followed his hypothesis. By searching through hundreds of published geochemistry papers, he identified 31 events in the last 542 million years in which a significant change occurred in Earth’s carbon cycle. For each event, including the five mass extinctions, Rothman noted the change in carbon, expressed in the geochemical record as a change in the relative abundance of two isotopes, carbon-12 and carbon-13. He also noted the duration of time over which the changes occurred.</p>
<p>He then devised a mathematical transformation to convert these quantities into the total mass of carbon that was added to the oceans during each event. Finally, he plotted both the mass and timescale of each event.</p>
<p>“It became evident that there was a characteristic rate of change that the system basically didn’t like to go past,” Rothman says.</p>
<p>In other words, he observed a common threshold that most of the 31 events appeared to stay under. While these events involved significant changes in carbon, they were relatively benign — not enough to destabilize the system toward catastrophe. In contrast, four of the five mass extinction events lay over the threshold, with the most severe end-Permian extinction being the farthest over the line.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“Then it became a question of figuring out what it meant,” Rothman says.</p>
<p><strong>A hidden leak</strong></p>
<p>Upon further analysis, Rothman found that the critical rate for catastrophe is related to a hidden process within the Earth’s natural carbon cycle. The cycle is essentially a loop between photosynthesis and respiration. Normally, there is a “leak” in the cycle, in which a small amount of organic carbon sinks to the ocean bottom and, over time, is buried as sediment and sequestered from the rest of the carbon cycle.</p>
<p>Rothman found that the critical rate was equivalent to the rate of excess production of carbon dioxide that would result from plugging the leak. Any additional carbon dioxide injected into the cycle could not be described by the loop itself. One or more other processes would instead have taken the carbon cycle into unstable territory.</p>
<p>He then determined that the critical rate applies only beyond the timescale at which the marine carbon cycle can re-establish its equilibrium after it is disturbed. Today, this timescale is about 10,000 years. For much shorter events, the critical threshold is no longer tied to the rate at which carbon is added to the oceans but instead to the carbon’s total mass. Both scenarios would leave an excess of carbon circulating through the oceans and atmosphere, likely resulting in global warming and ocean acidification.</p>
<p><strong>The century</strong><strong>’</strong><strong>s the limit</strong></p>
<p>From the critical rate and the equilibrium timescale, Rothman calculated the critical mass of carbon for the modern day to be about 310 gigatons.</p>
<p>He then compared his prediction to the total amount of carbon added to the Earth’s oceans by the year 2100, as projected in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC projections consider four possible pathways for carbon dioxide emissions, ranging from one associated with stringent policies to limit carbon dioxide emissions, to another related to the high range of scenarios with no limitations.</p>
<p>The best-case scenario projects that humans will add 300 gigatons of carbon to the oceans by 2100, while more than 500 gigatons will be added under the worst-case scenario, far exceeding the critical threshold. In all scenarios, Rothman shows that by 2100, the carbon cycle will either be close to or well beyond the threshold for catastrophe.</p>
<p>“There should be ways of pulling back [emissions of carbon dioxide],” Rothman says. “But this work points out reasons why we need to be careful, and it gives more reasons for studying the past to inform the present.”</p>
<p>This research was supported, in part, by NASA and the National Science Foundation.</p>
“This is not saying that disaster occurs the next day,” says Professor Daniel Rothman about his new study. “It’s saying that, if left unchecked, the carbon cycle would move into a realm which would be no longer stable, and would behave in a way that would be difficult to predict. In the geologic past, this type of behavior is associated with mass extinction.”
Climate change, Lorenz Center, EAPS, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Emissions, Environment, Geology, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Research, School of Science, NASA, National Science Foundation (NSF)MIT map offers real-time, crowd-sourced flood reporting during Hurricane Irmahttps://news.mit.edu/2017/map-real-time-crowd-sourced-flood-reporting-hurricane-irma-0908
Via social media, residents can contribute to public map that increases safety and helps response planning.
Fri, 08 Sep 2017 19:40:01 -0400School of Architecture and Planninghttps://news.mit.edu/2017/map-real-time-crowd-sourced-flood-reporting-hurricane-irma-0908<p>As Hurricane Irma bears down on the U.S., the MIT Urban Risk Lab has launched a free, open-source platform that will help residents and government officials track flooding in Broward County, Florida. The platform, <a href="https://riskmap.us/">RiskMap.us</a>, is being piloted to enable both residents and emergency managers to obtain better information on flooding conditions in near-real time.</p>
<p>Residents affected by flooding can add information to the publicly available map via popular social media channels. Using Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram, users submit reports by sending a direct message to the Risk Map chatbot. The chatbot replies to users with a one-time link through which they can upload information including location, flood depth, a photo, and description.</p>
<p>Residents and government officials can view the map to see recent flood reports to understand changing flood conditions across the county. Tomas Holderness, a research scientist in the MIT Department of Architecture, led the design of the system. “This project shows the importance that citizen data has to play in emergencies,” he says. “By connecting residents and emergency managers via social messaging, our map helps keep people informed and improve response times.”</p>
<p>Home to Fort Lauderdale, Broward County is located on the southeastern coast of Florida, just north of Miami. The announcement of Risk Map has been part of the county’s preparedness communications as the area braces for the storm.</p>
<p>"Once the reports are generated, we’ll be able to gather information and create a publicly available map in real time [to] allow those who are in flooded areas to travel safely if they need to, and to understand what the risks are around them,” Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief said at a news conference on Friday. “This type of information will assist us with assessing damage in real time during the storm event and help prioritize response efforts after the storm."</p>
<p>Researchers and government officials emphasized that Risk Map is a flood-reporting platform for the Broward County. For life-threatening situations residents should continue to call 911.</p>
<p>The Risk Map project is part of an ongoing collaboration between Broward County and the <a href="http://urbanrisklab.org/">MIT Urban Risk Lab</a>, which develops methods, prototypes, and technologies to embed risk reduction and preparedness into the design of cities and regions to increase the resilience of local communities. The MIT team aims to expand the map to new counties and add additional social media platforms in the near future.</p>
<p>“All our projects in the Urban Risk Lab try to create a conduit between government and citizens for preparing for and responding to events,” says Miho Mazereeuw, director of the Urban Risk Lab and associate professor of architecture and urbanism. “As cities become increasingly complex systems with growing populations, they bear the brunt of extreme weather events. Our platform works to increase community awareness so that we can reduce risk together.”</p>
<p>The Urban Risk Lab also piloted the system in Indonesia — where the project is called PetaBencana.id, or “Map Disaster” — during a large flood event on Feb. 20, 2017.</p>
<p>During the flooding, over 300,000 users visited the public website in 24 hours, and the map was integrated into the Uber application to help drivers avoid flood waters. The project in Indonesia is supported by a grant from USAID and is working in collaboration with the Indonesian Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Pacific Disaster Centre, and the Humanitarian Open Street Map Team.</p>
<p>The Urban Risk Lab team is also working in India on RiskMap.in. With support from the TATA Center for Technology and Design at MIT, the lab aims to launch the pilot this fall, in time for the monsoon season. The team is researching additional functionality for this two-way conversation with the public during such events and developing an alert system to inform residents.&nbsp;</p>
A view of hurricane Irma from the International Space StationImage: NASAArchitecture, Urban studies and planning, Disaster response, Natural disasters, School of Architecture and Planning, Weather, ClimateShell executive describes inevitable transition to carbon-free energyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/shell-executive-describes-transition-carbon-free-energy-0907
Harry Brekelmans says Shell has significant commitment to renewable energy, carbon pricing.Thu, 07 Sep 2017 14:00:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/shell-executive-describes-transition-carbon-free-energy-0907<p>Harry Brekelmans, the projects and technology director for Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world’s leading oil and gas companies and a founding member of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), on Wednesday met with groups of MIT students and faculty members about their work before taking part in a public discussion about energy issues with MITEI co-founder and director Robert Armstrong.</p>
<p>In the discussion, titled, “If you had a billion dollars for energy-related R&amp;D, where would you spend it?,” Brekelmans addressed that lofty question and many others about the company’s, and the world’s, energy future.</p>
<p>“For some years already we’ve been aware of the energy transition,” Brekelmans said. It’s accelerating, he said, and it’s clear that “it’s time to act, even more so than before.” Already, Shell has made “significant investments in wind, in solar, in biofuels — not all of them successful,” demonstrating the need to be careful about how one invests that research money. Because of the complexity of the world’s energy systems and demands, he said, “we have concluded that this will be a multidecade transition.”</p>
<p>Shell has long expressed its acceptance of the science of human-induced climate change and its determination to invest heavily in technologies to help enable a global transition to a world of drastically reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. As part of that commitment, Shell continues to fund a variety of research projects at MIT and elsewhere related to renewable energy, energy storage, and ways of capturing and storing carbon emissions from fossil fuel.</p>
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<p>In introducing the discussion Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, pointed out that Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden recently said that with the right mix of policy and innovation, he sees global demand for oil peaking in the early 2030s or sooner — and that his next car will be electric.</p>
<p>Zuber said that MIT’s <em>Plan for Action on Climate Change </em>calls for finding solutions for decarbonizing the world’s energy systems, aiming for a zero-carbon energy system by the century’s end. To achieve that, she said, MIT’s view is that “the best chance of success is if a broad range of stakeholders, from industry to government to civil society, engage with each other proactively to address it.” One way of doing that, she said, is through conversations such as this one.</p>
<p>Brekelmans said that Shell’s approach to energy R&amp;D is two-pronged, working in parallel on both near-term and long-term strategies. For the near term, the emphasis is on finding technologies that already exist in other industries that can be adapted and scaled up to have a rapid impact on energy use. The longer-term work deals with new findings in laboratories, that have great potential but that may require many years of work to determine if they can be scaled up to meet a significant portion of the world’s energy needs or to improve the performance of existing energy systems.</p>
<p>While the company’s investments in low-carbon energy technologies goes back many years, the mix of research projects they support has evolved over time, he said. One change is that much more of the long-term research is now focused on energy storage systems. These are seen as a key enabling technology to allow for increased usage of energy sources that are inherently variable, such as wind and solar power. “It was not part of our portfolio 10 years ago,” he said, but is now a significant piece of it.</p>
<p>Another research area of increasing emphasis is capturing and storing carbon emissions from power plants to reduce their climate impact, he said. But other approaches don’t necessarily have to be high-tech, he said. “When we talk about offsets, we increasingly talk about simple things like reforestation,” he told students during his morning meetings.</p>
<p>Another change, he said, is “in the way we do R&amp;D. Our collaboration with MIT is absolutely fundamental” to Shell’s efforts. “We know we can’t do it ourselves alone. Much of the progress is happening here and at other institutions.” With the company’s own technology campus in Kendall Square, bordering the MIT campus, “we are hiring people who have no prior experience in oil and gas but who have a knack for innovation,” he said. Shell’s investments, he said, include providing “seed investments in crazy ideas, to help bring them to the next stage.”</p>
<p>Despite the company’s ongoing commitment to working toward a transition away from greenhouse emissions, Brekelmans said that he and his colleagues “all conclude every year that we’re not moving fast enough,” and continue to redouble their efforts.</p>
<p>Emphasizing that their reach and their interests are global, he added that Shell has also recently opened a campus in Bangalore, India, that employs almost 1,000 technologists, as an incubator for new technologies and approaches. The world’s energy systems and needs are very different and highly localized, he said: “Almost every country is different,” in terms of its needs and the most effective ways of meeting them.</p>
<p>In the developing world, he said, the company provides aid through the Shell Foundation, helping to bring electricity and other energy supplies to some of the world’s 3 billion people who lack access to reliable power. Among other things, these grants are aimed at helping some developing nations steer toward the use of natural gas rather than coal, as a lower-carbon fuel.</p>
<p>Shell “wants to be a voice and a leader” in the world’s energy transition, he said. But along the way, he said, the company must “not abandon the economic process that made us a leader,” namely the production and distribution of oil and gas.</p>
<p>The company clearly recognizes the need for some kind of pricing on carbon fuels that reflects their real impact on the world, Brekelmans said. Already, the company “internally works with a price on carbon,” assuming that this will eventually be part of the economic reality.</p>
<p>As for what form that pricing should take, whether it’s a carbon tax, a fee-and-dividend, or a cap-and-trade system, he said, “we are relatively agnostic, as long as we have a price that we can then develop and evolve.” Having some such system in place, he says, is “preferable to the almost religious debate over what is the best system.”</p>
Harry Brekelmans, right, the projects and technology director for Royal Dutch Shell, speaks with MITEI co-founder and director Robert Armstrong.
Photo: Kelley TraversAlternative energy, Climate change, Emissions, Energy, Energy storage, Environment, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Oil and gas, Renewable energyFirebricks offer low-cost storage for carbon-free energyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/firebricks-low-cost-storage-carbon-free-energy-0906
Ancient technology could be used to level electricity prices for renewables.Wed, 06 Sep 2017 00:00:01 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/firebricks-low-cost-storage-carbon-free-energy-0906<p>Firebricks, designed to withstand high heat, have been part of our technological arsenal for at least three millennia, since the era of the Hittites. Now, a proposal from MIT researchers shows this ancient invention could play a key role in enabling the world to switch away from fossil fuels and rely instead on carbon-free energy sources.</p>
<p>The researchers’ idea is to make use of excess electricity produced when demand is low — for example, from wind farms when strong winds are blowing at night — by using electric resistance heaters, which convert electricity into heat. These devices would use the excess electricity to heat up a large mass of firebricks, which can retain the heat for long periods if they are enclosed in an insulated casing. At a later time, the heat could be used directly for industrial processes, or it could feed generators that convert it back to electricity when the power is needed.</p>
<p>The technology itself is old, but its potential usefulness is a new phenomenon, brought about by the rapid rise of intermittent renewable energy sources, and the peculiarities of the way electricity prices are set. Technologically, the system “could have been developed in the 1920s, but there was no market for it then,” says Charles Forsberg, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and lead author of a research paper describing the plan, that appears this week in the <em>Electricity Journal</em>.</p>
<p>Forsberg points out that the demand for industrial heat in the U.S. and most industrialized regions is actually larger than the total demand for electricity. And unlike the demand for electricity, which varies greatly and often unpredictably, the demand for industrial heat is constant and can make use of an extra heat source whenever it’s available, providing an almost limitless market for the heat provided by this firebrick-based system.</p>
<p>The system, which Forsberg calls FIRES (for FIrebrick Resistance-heated Energy Storage), would in effect raise the minimum price of electricity on the utilities market, which currently can plunge to almost zero at times of high production, such as the middle of a sunny day when solar plant outputs are at their peak.</p>
<p>Electricity prices are determined a day in advance, with a separate price for each one-hour segment of the day. This is done through an auction system between the producers and the distributors of power. Distributors determine how much power they expect to need during each hour, and suppliers bid based on their expected costs for producing that power. Depending on the needs at a given time, these prices can be low, if only baseload natural gas plants are needed, for example, or they can be much higher if the demand requires use of much more expensive “peaking” power plants. At the end of each auction, the distributors figure out how many of the bids will be needed to meet the projected demand, and the price to be paid to all of the suppliers is then determined by the highest-priced bid of all those accepted for that hour.</p>
<p>But that system can lead to odd outcomes when power that is very cheap to produce — solar, wind and nuclear power, whose actual operating costs are vanishingly small — can supply enough to meet the demand. Then, the price the suppliers get for the power can be close to zero, rendering the plants uneconomical.</p>
<p>But by diverting much of that excess output into thermal storage by heating a large mass of firebrick, then selling that heat directly or using it to drive turbines and produce power later when it’s needed, FIRES could essentially set a lower limit on the market price for electricity, which would likely be about the price of natural gas. That, in turn, could help to make more carbon-free power sources, such as solar, wind, and nuclear, more profitable and thus encourage their expansion.</p>
<p>The collapse of electricity prices due to expansion of nonfossil energy is already happening and will continue to increase as renewable energy installations increase. “In electricity markets such as Iowa, California, and Germany, the price of electricity drops to near zero at times of high wind or solar output,” Forsberg says. Once the amount of generating capacity provided by solar power reaches about 15 percent of the total generating mix, or when wind power reaches 30 percent of the total, building such installations can become unprofitable unless there is a sufficient storage capacity to absorb the excess for later use.</p>
<p>At present, the options for storing excess electricity are essentially limited to batteries or pumped hydroelectric systems. By contrast, the low-tech firebrick thermal storage system would cost anywhere from one-tenth to one-fortieth as much as either of those options, Forsberg says.</p>
<p>Firebrick itself is just a variant of ordinary bricks, made from clays that are capable of withstanding much higher temperatures, ranging up to 1,600 degrees Celsius or more. Virtually dirt cheap to produce — clay is, after all, just a particular kind of dirt — such high-temperature bricks have been found in archeological sites dating back to around 3,500 years ago, such as in iron-smelting kilns built by the Hittites in what is now Turkey. The fact that these bricks have survived until now testifies to their durability.</p>
<p>Nowadays, by varying the chemical composition of the clay, firebrick can be made with a variety of properties. For example, bricks to be placed in the center of the assemblage could have high thermal conductivity, so that they can easily take in heat from the resistance heaters. These bricks could easily give up that heat to cold air being blown through the mass to carry away the heat for industrial use. But the bricks used for the outer parts of the structure could have very low thermal conductivity, thus creating an insulating shell to help retain the heat of the central stack.</p>
<p>The current limit on FIRES is the resistance heaters. Existing low-cost, reliable heaters only go to about 850 C. Ultimately, Forsberg suggests, the bricks themselves could be made electrically conductive, so that they could act as low-cost resistance heaters on their own, both producing and storing the heat. A promising material for these firebricks is silicon carbide, which is already produced at massive scales for uses such as sandpaper. China currently produces about a million tons of it per year, Forsberg says.</p>
<p>Turning that heat back into electricity is a bigger technical challenge, so that would likely be a next-generation version of the FIRES system, he says. That’s because producing electricity with the conventional turbines used for natural gas power plants requires a much higher temperature. While industrial process heat is viable at about 800 C, he says, the turbines need compressed air heated to at least 1,600 C. Ordinary resistance heaters can’t go that high, and such systems will also need an enclosing pressure vessel to handle the needed air pressure. But the advantage would be great: Doubling the operating temperature would cut in half the cost of the heat produced, Forsberg says.</p>
<p>The next step, Forsberg says, will be to set up some full-scale prototype units to prove the principles in real-world conditions, something he expects will happen by 2020. “We’re finding the right customers for those initial units,” he says, which would probably be a company such as an ethanol refinery, which uses a lot of heat, located near a sizable wind-turbine installation.</p>
<p>“I believe that FIRES is an innovative approach to solve a real power grid problem,” says Regis Matzie, the now-retired Chief Technical Officer at Westinghouse Electric, who was not involved in this work. The way prices for electricity are determined in this country produces a “skewed electricity market [that] produces low or even negative market prices when a significant fraction of electrical energy on the grid is provided by renewables,” he says. “A very positive way to correct this trend would be to deploy an economical way of storing the energy generated during low electricity market prices, e.g., when the renewables are generating a large amount of electricity, and then releasing this stored energy when the market prices are high… FIRES provides a potentially economic way to do this, but would probably need a demonstration to establish the operability and the economics.”</p>
<p>The research team included MIT graduate students Daniel Stack, Daniel Curtis, Geoffrey Haratyk, and recent graduate Nestor Sepulveda MS ’14.</p>
One proposed application of the firebrick-based thermal storage system is depicted in this hypothetical configuration, where it is coupled to a nuclear power plant to provide easily dispatchable power.
Courtesy of the researchersResearch, Nuclear science and engineering, School of Engineering, Alternative energy, Energy, Energy storage, Greenhouse gases, Climate change, Global Warming, SolarTeam gathers unprecedented data on atmosphere’s organic chemistryhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/unprecedented-data-colorado-forest-atmosphere-organic-chemistry-0904
Colorado forest study provides clearest-ever picture of gases released into the atmosphere and how they change.Mon, 04 Sep 2017 10:59:59 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/unprecedented-data-colorado-forest-atmosphere-organic-chemistry-0904<p>For a few weeks over the summer in 2011, teams of scientists from around the world converged on a small patch of ponderosa pine forest in Colorado to carry out one of the most detailed, extended survey of atmospheric chemistry ever attempted in one place, in many cases using new measurement devices created especially for this project. Now, after years of analysis, their comprehensive synthesis of the findings have been released this week.</p>
<p>The teams, which included a group from MIT using a newly-developed device to identify and quantify compounds of carbon, reported their combined results in a paper in the journal <em>Nature Geoscience</em>. Jesse Kroll, MIT associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and of chemical engineering, and James Hunter, an MIT technical instructor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering who was a doctoral student in Kroll’s group at the time of the research, were senior author and lead author, respectively, of the 24 contributors to the report. Associate Professor Colette Heald of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences was also a co-author.</p>
<p>The organic (carbon-containing) compounds they studied in that patch of Colorado forest play a key role in atmospheric chemical processes that can affect air quality, the health of the ecosystem, and the climate itself. Yet many of these processes remain poorly understood in their real-world complexity, and they had never been so rigorously sampled, studied, and quantified in one place before.</p>
<p>“The goal was trying to understand the chemistry associated with organic particulate matter in a forested environment,” Kroll explains. “The various groups took a lot of different measurements using state-of-the-art instruments we each had developed.” In doing so, they were able to fill in significant gaps in the inventory of organic compounds in the atmosphere, finding that about a third of them were in the form of previously unmeasured semi-volatile and intermediate-volatility organic compounds (SVOCs and IVOCs).</p>
<p>“We’ve long suspected there were gaps in our measurements of carbon in the atmosphere,” Kroll says. “There seemed to be more aerosols than we can explain by measuring their precursors.”</p>
<p>The MIT team, as well as some of the other research groups, developed instruments that specifically targeted these hard-to-measure compounds, which Kroll describes as “still in the gas phase, but sticky.” Their stickiness makes it hard to get them through an inlet into a measuring device, but these compounds may play a significant role in the formation and alteration of aerosols, tiny airborne particles that can contribute to smog or to the nucleation of raindrops or ice crystals, affecting the Earth’s climate.</p>
<p>“Some of these instruments were used for the first time in this campaign,” Kroll says. When analyzing the results, which provided unprecedented measurements of the SVOCs and IVOCs, “we realized we had this data set that provided much more information on organic compounds than we ever had before. By bringing the data from all these instruments together into one combined dataset, we were able to describe the organic compounds in the atmosphere in a more comprehensive way than had ever been possible, to figure out what’s really going on.”</p>
<p>It’s a more complicated challenge than it might seem, the researchers point out. A very large number of different organic compounds are constantly being emitted by trees and other vegetation, which vary in their chemical composition, their physical properties, and their ability to react chemically with other compounds. As soon as they enter the air many of the compounds begin to oxidize, which exponentially increases their number and diversity.</p>
<p>The collaborative campaign to characterize the quantities and reactions of these different compounds took place in a section of the Manitou Experimental Forest Observatory in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Five different instruments were used to collect the data on organic compounds, and three of those had never been used before.</p>
<p>Despite the progress, much remains to be done, the researchers say. While the field measurements provided a detailed profile of the amounts of different compounds over time, it could not identify the specific reactions and pathways that were transforming one set of compounds to another. That kind of analysis requires the direct study of the reactions in a controlled laboratory setting, and that kind of work is ongoing, in Kroll’s MIT lab and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Filling in all these details will make it possible to refine the accuracy of atmospheric models and help to assess such things as strategies to mitigate specific air pollution issues, from ozone to particulate matter, or to assess the sources and removal mechanisms of atmospheric components that affect Earth’s climate.</p>
<p>The measurement team included researchers from the University of Colorado, the California Air Resources Board, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Toronto, the University of Innsbruck in Austria, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Edmund Mach Foundation in Italy, Harvard University, the University of Montreal, Aerodyne Research, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Washington. The work was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.</p>
“The goal was trying to understand the chemistry associated with organic particulate matter in a forested environment,” associate professor Jesse Kroll explains. “We took a lot of measurements using state-of-the-art instruments we had developed.” The team also took many photos while in Colorado. Pictured on the bottom right is Douglas Day, CU researcher and organizer of the field campaign.
Photos: Douglas Day, Alex Huffman, and Jose JimenezSchool of Engineering, Civil and environmental engineering, Chemical engineering, Climate, Climate change, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Research, DMSE, EAPS3 Questions: Brent Ryan on Hurricane Harvey’s implications for U.S. citieshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/3-questions-brent-ryan-on-hurricane-harvey-implications-for-us-cities-0901
Stranded in Houston by hurricane floodwaters, an MIT associate professor sees firsthand how design and policy decisions affected the storm’s impact.
Fri, 01 Sep 2017 12:55:02 -0400School of Architecture and Planninghttps://news.mit.edu/2017/3-questions-brent-ryan-on-hurricane-harvey-implications-for-us-cities-0901<p><em>Flying through Texas last weekend on his way to a workshop in Mexico, Brent Ryan found himself stranded at a hotel near Houston’s Bush International Airport as a result of Hurricane Harvey’s catastrophic flooding. An associate professor of urban design and planning at MIT, Ryan and two of his graduate students watched the waters rise and considered the implications of the disaster unfolding around them.</em></p>
<p><em>Ryan, who heads the City Design and Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), is no stranger to cities and natural disasters. He has studied </em><a href="https://stl.mit.edu/project/developing-littoral-gradient" target="_blank"><em>coastal development in China</em></a><em>, co-led an interdisciplinary team exploring strategies for </em><a href="https://lcau.mit.edu/project/rising-tides-relocation-and-sea-level-rise-metropolitan-boston" target="_blank"><em>Boston’s adaptation to climate change</em></a><em>, and this summer taught a graduate practicum focused on </em><a href="https://dusp.mit.edu/subject/fall-2017-11s938" target="_blank"><em>disaster-resilient communities and housing in India</em></a><em>. Last January, a team including Ryan and other MIT faculty were winners in a design competition to envision how policy changes, new investments, and innovative thinking could </em><a href="http://architecture.mit.edu/architecture-and-urbanism/project/bight-coastal-urbanism" target="_blank"><em>reshape the coasts of New York and New Jersey</em></a><em> and prepare them for the next 25 years.</em></p>
<p><em>After safely departing from Houston, Ryan shared his account of what he observed during the hurricane, offered his thoughts on human decisions that contributed to the scale of the destruction — and explained why he believes the disaster ought to prompt soul-searching about where and how we build communities. </em></p>
<p><strong>Q. </strong>How did you get caught up in the hurricane in Houston and what did you see there?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> I flew into Houston last week with the weather worsening. And I think none of us — whether it was the news agencies or the airports or travelers — had any idea that we should have left as soon as we could have. By Saturday afternoon it started raining really hard and it just didn't stop raining. Our flight was cancelled, so we rebooked from Dallas. I had rented a car preemptively on Saturday, which was really lucky. But on Sunday morning, we got up to leave and realized the roads in all directions were closed off by floods. Together with two master’s students, I was more or less trapped for 48 hours. Nobody panicked, but when you think, “I'm cut off by floodwaters and I don’t know for how long,” it starts to get really scary.</p>
<p>We were all sitting there on Sunday thinking about the storm’s impact, asking ourselves, “How did things get this way? What went wrong?” In a sense, it really was a perfect storm because you have a city that's sprawling, hasn't been carefully constructed, and lacks environmental sensitivity in its development patterns — and it got the heaviest storm that you could possibly imagine.</p>
<p>Houston is a very wet area. It’s low lying, it has clay soils, it’s poorly drained. We realized as we were looking at the map — thinking, How did these airport roads get flooded? — that, essentially, what we were seeing was the runoff from the airport runways draining into what are called bayous in Houston. We realized that the airport access roads had cut across the drainage routes for these bayous in a very casual way. They had not been engineered to really confront any substantial amount of flooding. That's what trapped us at the airport. Regionally, we noticed that even interstate highways were flooded because the engineering of the roadway system wasn't enough to accommodate the degree of water that was generated.</p>
<p>Part two of Houston's problems is the region’s absolutely sprawling, auto-oriented development. You have parking lots, wide roads, impervious surfaces, and uncontrolled development that more or less ignores environmentally sensitive areas. With an event like this, it becomes viscerally evident which residential areas are absolutely not safe from even moderate flooding. Driving out, it was so sad: We were driving past all this water, stretching for as far as the eye could see with houses poking out of it.</p>
<p><strong>Q. </strong>How does Houston recover and plan for the future?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>I think you need to start at the regional level first, from a life-safety perspective and from a critical regional infrastructure perspective. It’s absolutely unacceptable that both airports shut down and major interstate highways closed. Once that happens, the area is essentially closed to the outside world. I think Houston needs to generate a whole new set of engineering standards in conjunction with environmental engineering analysis of the area that says, “We can't build this way anymore, and we have to rebuild a lot of places that we thought were okay.”</p>
<p>A secondary priority for life safety is either discouraging or prohibiting settlement in low-lying areas — and there's so much of that in Houston. There are a lot of residential neighborhoods that are getting flooded two, three, four, five times a year. These are areas in flood-prone zones and they're not going to be safe from future flooding. There’s no doubt about it.</p>
<p>But Houston is famous for having no zoning. They're not going to tell people how they can build or where; it's all up to the market. And the market has made a lot of decisions that are absolutely not in context and not sensitive to the environmental needs of the area. I think Houston really needs to do some soul searching about how they govern land use and residential development.</p>
<p>Whether or not you think that climate change is an issue, there's not anyone out there who doesn't see that Hurricane Harvey just came in and destroyed or damaged half of the city of Houston. Whatever the cause of Harvey’s strength, I think serious provisions need to be made for ensuring that the city doesn't shut down in this type of storm again. But that serious commitment is going to have to go up against a lot of anti-government ideology, and a lot of skepticism about regional planning and regional governance. In that sense Houston is going to face real dilemmas — ideological and practical — as it faces the future.</p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>You’ve studied disaster preparedness and resilient urban design around the globe. Are you able to draw any lessons from Houston based on your experience in different regions and contexts?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>Yes, a significant lesson, for better or worse, is that top-down planning allows you to make decisions and to fund those decisions more easily with respect to resilience.</p>
<p>China is not a democratic country, but it has top-down planning. The central government allocates the funding and local government essentially falls in line and does what the central government says. There’s no disagreement in the Netherlands that large-scale governance is critical to providing protection from water. It’s a country that has become a leading example in how you can use design, planning, and engineering in concert to plan effectively for these types of problems. The Dutch are the classic example, but I think once China decides to confront sea-level rise directly, it's going to do so swiftly.</p>
<p>It's a lot more complicated in the United States. The New York region we studied after Hurricane Sandy has something like 250 separate municipalities. Each of these municipalities is facing its financial future more or less on its own. Each is responsive to its own citizens, who may be skeptical of relocation. Each governs its own land-use pattern. America's local governance and lack of regional planning really doesn't serve the United States well with respect to this kind of problem, whereas I think European and Asian governments — where there's a lot more trust in the higher levels of government and a tradition of central government abundantly funding planning and design decisions — are better prepared to deal with this.</p>
<p>I don’t want to label the Harvey disaster a wake-up call, because we've had a few wake-up calls already. But it's a reminder that the manifestation of climate change or climate severity can affect different cities in different ways. It's a reminder of how many of our cities and regions are vulnerable. And it’s an absolute reminder of the imperative for us to think hard about what types of measures we can generate to create more resilient regions.</p>
Texas Army National Guardsmen help Houston residents affected by flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey board a military vehicle. "With an event like this," says MIT associate professor of urban planning Brent Ryan, "it becomes viscerally evident which residential areas are absolutely not safe from even moderate flooding."Photo: Lt. Zachary West/U.S. Army National Guard3 Questions, Natural disasters, Urban studies and planning, Design, Weather, Climate, Climate change, Water, Policy, Transportation, Development, Cities, Faculty, Real estate, Business and management, School of Architecture and Planning, EconomicsStrength of global stratospheric circulation measured for first timehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/strength-global-stratospheric-circulation-measured-first-time-0828
Estimate will help gauge hang time of greenhouse gases, water vapor, and ozone in upper atmosphere.Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:00:00 -0400Jennifer Chu | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/strength-global-stratospheric-circulation-measured-first-time-0828<p>When commercial airplanes break through the clouds to reach cruising altitude, they have typically arrived in the stratosphere, the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere. The air up there is dry and clear, and much calmer than the turbulent atmosphere we experience on the ground.</p>
<p>And yet, for all its seeming tranquility, the stratosphere can be a powerful conveyor belt, pulling air up from the Earth’s equatorial region and pushing it back down toward the poles in a continuously circulating pattern. The strength of this circulation can significantly impact the amount of water vapor, chemicals, and ozone transported around the planet.</p>
<p>Now scientists in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) have for the first time determined the strength of the stratosphere’s circulation, based on observations of key chemicals traveling within this atmospheric layer.</p>
<p>In a paper published today in the journal <em>Nature Geoscience</em>, the team reports that the stratosphere pulls about 7 billion kilograms of air up through the tropics per second, worldwide, at an altitude of about 20 kilometers. The researchers estimate that the average parcel of air can spend about 1.5 years within this layer before circulating back down to lower layers of the atmosphere.</p>
<p>The new estimate can help scientists gauge where and for how long water vapor, ozone, and greenhouse gases remain within the stratosphere. Scientists can also use the team’s method to determine future changes in the stratosphere’s strength — essential information for tracking the recovery of the ozone hole and the progression of global warming.</p>
<p>The paper’s lead authors are Marianna Linz, a former PhD student in EAPS who is now a postdoc at the University of California at Los Angeles; and Alan Plumb, a professor emeritus in EAPS; along with researchers from New York University, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Cambridge University, and Caltech.</p>
<p><strong>Chemical laps</strong></p>
<p>The circulation of the stratosphere is known to scientists as the meridional overturning, referring to the pattern in which air is pulled up into the stratosphere near the equator and transported along the Earth’s meridians, or longitudinal lines, before being drawn back down at the poles. Scientists have attempted to measure the strength of this overturning circulation, concentrating mainly on the speed at which water vapor rises through the stratosphere near the equator.</p>
<p>“Others have looked at this region of the equator where they think most of the stuff is coming up, and they’ve tried to characterize this using water vapor,” Linz says. “But that’s just looking at this narrow region, and it’s difficult to infer what the rest of the circulation looks like.”</p>
<p>Linz, Plumb, and their colleagues took a more global approach, making use of atmospheric measurements of two atmospheric chemicals, sulfur hexafluoride and nitrous oxide, taken around the world by satellites, weather balloons, and aircraft. They considered these chemicals to be ideal candidates to track, as they have no “stratospheric sinks,” or methods by which the concentration of these gases would change once they reached the stratosphere.</p>
<p>“The thinking is that what goes up must come down,” Linz says.</p>
<p>The scientists compiled measurements of both chemicals between 2007 and 2011, with the idea of estimating how long these chemicals took to enter, then exit, the stratosphere. They culled through the measurements, noting each chemical’s concentrations in given parcels of air throughout the stratosphere</p>
<p>at various locations and altitudes.</p>
<p>In particular, they looked over time to identify parcels of air rising up in the tropics, and later, parcels of air with the same concentration of chemicals, being drawn back down at the poles.</p>
<p>They reasoned that the time lag between the rising and sinking would indicate the time that parcel spent in the stratosphere. A simple calculation, factoring in the total mass of air in the stratosphere, would yield the speed at which that parcel traveled through the stratosphere, which essentially reflects the strength of circulation.</p>
<p>“If you think of a racetrack, and someone doing a lap on that track, you can measure the time they entered the track, and the time they came out of it, and you can calculate their average speed around the track if you know the track distance,” Plumb explains. “So this is like that, in a way.”</p>
<p><strong>The air up there</strong></p>
<p>The team performed these calculations and averaged the results for various altitudes throughout the stratosphere. Their calculations for both chemicals agreed almost perfectly at lower altitudes of around 20 kilometers, yielding a circulation strength of about 7 billion kilograms per second — comparable in magnitude to the strength of the overturning circulation in the ocean.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“The most important thing to know in terms of impacts on climate change and ozone is what this circulation strength is like at this lower altitude, because that’s what is supplying chemicals to the stratosphere,” Plumb says.</p>
<p>Linz and Plumb compared their estimate with predictions of stratospheric circulation made by several climate models, and found that their estimate agreed with some models but not others. Linz says the team’s new estimate, and the method to calculate the stratosphere’s strength, can help to improve model predictions of warming and ozone development.</p>
<p>“If climate models are getting their stratospheric circulation wrong, they’re probably getting their ozone distributions wrong, which will have definite impacts on what the [predicted] trends are for global warming,” Linz says. “So having this benchmark is really valuable.”</p>
<p>The researchers are working to obtain more measurements, higher in the stratosphere, to better characterize the stratosphere’s strength at higher altitudes as well as within lower layers.</p>
<p>“We have this data and can say what the strength is at this level, but because we don’t have the data higher up, we can’t say nearly as much. So we really do need better observations in the upper stratosphere,” Linz says.</p>
<p>This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation.</p>
Scientists in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) have for the first time determined the strength of the stratosphere’s circulation, based on observations of key chemicals traveling within this atmospheric layer.
Image: MIT NewsClimate change, Climate, EAPS, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Research, Satellites, School of Science, National Science Foundation (NSF)Danielle Wood joins Media Lab facultyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/danielle-wood-joins-media-lab-faculty-0828
MIT alumna is establishing a new research group aimed at harnessing space engineering to improve life on Earth.Mon, 28 Aug 2017 09:00:00 -0400MIT Media Labhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/danielle-wood-joins-media-lab-faculty-0828<p>Danielle Wood ’05, SM ’08, PhD ’12 is the Media Lab’s newest assistant professor in the Program in Media Arts and Sciences. She will officially start working at the lab on Jan. 16, 2018, to establish a new research group, called <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/groups/space-enabled/overview/" target="_blank">Space Enabled</a>. Her mission is to advance justice and development in Earth's complex systems using designs enabled by space.</p>
<p>“Let’s keep striving for the ideal that space really is for the benefit of all humankind,” <a href="https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/beyond-the-cradle-2017-03-12/" target="_blank">Wood said</a> at a Media Lab event in March when she took part in a panel discussion about the future of space research. A scholar of societal development with a background that includes satellite design, systems engineering, and technology policy for the U.S. and emerging nations, Wood added that “space research is just a link in a bigger chain, part of a broad system of technology and art and science and design.” Her passion, she said, has been in designing satellite systems that serve societal needs while integrating new technology.</p>
<p>Growing up in Orlando, where she frequently witnessed space shuttle launches, Wood was inspired by how NASA teams came together to achieve such precise and challenging missions. But she also wanted to find opportunities to serve people directly in her career. Ultimately, that combination of interests led her to study aerospace engineering, policy, and international development. As a doctoral student at MIT, Wood traveled to 15 countries over 10 months as part of in-depth research on new satellite programs in Africa and Asia. The study explained how governments can harness international collaboration to foster domestic capability building and national development.</p>
<p>“Danielle ties space, development, and earth sciences together in a unique and impactful, Media Lab-like way,” says Media Lab Director Joi Ito. He adds that she “fits perfectly into our community like the puzzle piece you’ve been looking for forever.”</p>
<p><strong>Research priorities and plans</strong></p>
<p>In setting up the new group, Space Enabled, Wood plans to reduce barriers to applying space technology for societal benefit. Her research pursues a four-fold cycle that includes observation, explanation, co-design, and evaluation of complex systems that deliver public sector services, using methods from engineering and social science. “I am particularly interested in areas such as environment, health care, education, and law enforcement,” Wood explains. “These public service systems foster justice and societal development when they provide equitable access and high-quality service to consumers across the socioeconomic spectrum.” To that end, her group will partner with communities in the U.S. and abroad on long-term projects to implement new designs enabled by capabilities from space, such as satellite-based earth observation.</p>
<p>Wood’s group will include researchers and staff who bring together “multiple, seemingly unrelated interests. Some of the skill sets relevant to the projects I plan to pursue include engineering, design, technology policy, law, social science, geography, earth science, public health, history, art, and data analytics.” The Space Enabled team will not work in isolation: Wood says she expects to collaborate with other research groups at the Media Lab and also contribute to its <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/groups/space-exploration/overview/" target="_blank">Space Exploration initiative</a>. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Currently, Wood serves as the applied sciences manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she focuses on using earth science findings for societal applications, such as food security and water resource management. Previously, she served as special assistant and advisor to NASA’s deputy administrator, and prior to NASA, she worked at the Aerospace Corporation, Johns Hopkins University, and the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs.</p>
<p><strong>MIT roots and inspiration</strong></p>
<p>At MIT, Wood earned a PhD in systems engineering, a master's in aerospace engineering, a master's in technology policy, and a bachelor's in aerospace engineering. At the Media Lab’s “<a href="http://news.mit.edu/2017/media-lab-sets-sights-on-space-0314" target="_self">Beyond the Cradle</a>” event in March, Wood said that during her time at the Institute she was inspired by the expansion of space activity around the world and the potential uses of data captured by satellites. “But the question then becomes, how does the average person take advantage of that information? I look forward to co-designing solutions with communities to empower them to use space to make their own lives better. This is important in areas like food security, disaster response, and monitoring the spread of diseases influenced by environmental factors.”</p>
<p>During her time at MIT, Wood was awarded five fellowships, not only from MIT but also from the National Science Foundation, the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate program, and NASA’s Harriett G. Jenkins Predoctoral Fellowship Program.</p>
<p>Wood’s work has drawn widespread recognition. She has won grants from the Future Space Leaders Foundation (2016) and the National Science Foundation (2013), and she’s received awards from many organizations, including the Global Competitiveness Conference (2015), the International Astronautical Federation (2012) and NASA (2010). Wood has presented her research through many scholarly publications, conferences, and invited talks across Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and North America.</p>
<p>Wood says she’s excited to return to MIT with a new perspective shaped by her professional path thus far. “I have worked in government, academia, and the private sector, which gives me an understanding of how each community functions. This experience will help me build strong teams in my future research at the Media Lab.”</p>
Danielle Wood spoke at the Media Lab’s space event, Beyond the Cradle, in March. She will join the faculty full-time in January 2018.Photo: David Silverman PhotographyFaculty, Alumni/ae, Space, astronomy and planetary science, Space exploration, Aeronautical and astronautical engineering, NASA, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Developing countries, Satellites, Media Lab, School of Architecture and Planning, School of Engineering, Engineering Systems, PovertyFor the love of ice: Journeys to the remote and inhospitablehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/glaciologist-alison-criscitiello-seeks-out-ice-cores-for-science-0823
Alison Criscitiello PhD &#039;14 seeks ice cores in inhospitable locations, sometimes camping on ice sheets and sleeping with a shotgun in case of bear attacks. Wed, 23 Aug 2017 16:00:00 -0400Kate Repantis | MIT Alumni Associationhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/glaciologist-alison-criscitiello-seeks-out-ice-cores-for-science-0823<p>Ice has always been fascinating to Alison Criscitiello PhD '14.</p>
<p>“I had a science teacher who did a short unit on glaciers … I couldn’t believe they were real,” she says. That classroom encounter when she was in eight grade in Winchester, Massachusetts,&nbsp;had a lasting impact.</p>
<p>Criscitiello went on to earn MIT’s first PhD in glaciology, and now she&nbsp;is an adjunct assistant professor of glaciology at the University of Calgary in Canada. She studies the history of sea ice and polar marine environments, primarily by drilling ice cores on land-based ice sheets and ice caps in both the Arctic and Antarctic. In March, Criscitiello became the technical director of the newly-created Canadian Ice Core Archive at the University of Alberta, where scientists will have access to 1.7 kilometers of core samples.</p>
<p>“The very northernmost reaches of the Canadian High Arctic are incredibly understudied and under­sampled,” says Criscitiello. To reach remote sites, she often must take several small prop plane flights and then ski in to the destination. On trips to such places as West Antarctica and Greenland, she has had to camp on ice sheets; in Greenland, she’s even slept with a shotgun in case of polar bear attacks.</p>
<p>In a 2014 <a href="http://ladyparagons.com/2014/10/women-in-stem-podcast-episode-12-alison-criscitiello/?doing_wp_cron=1496426605.6988620758056640625000" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Lady Paragons Women in STEM podcast</a>, Criscitiello said she does not mind the hardships:&nbsp;“For me, there is really nothing else in the world that compares to that feeling of being somewhere incredibly remote and frozen, even if it’s inhospitable.”</p>
<p>Her 40-day winter ski traverse with Rebecca ­Haspel and Kate Harris&nbsp;SM ’10&nbsp;through the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia&nbsp;in 2015 is the subject of the new documentary&nbsp;"Borderski." In it, the women travel&nbsp;along Tajikistan’s border with Kyrgyzstan, China, and Afghanistan to bring attention to conservation of the area’s migratory wildlife. The three reunited this winter to bike a 1,450-kilometer ice road that connects remote communities in northern Canada.</p>
<p>Criscitiello has also led the first all-women’s summit of Pinnacle Peak in the Indian Himalayas. Recent expeditions have included summiting Mount Logan, Canada’s highest peak, and the first all-female ascents of mixed routes off Alaska’s Pika Glacier.</p>
<p>In 2016, Criscitiello cofounded Girls on Ice Canada, a nonprofit wilderness and science education program that gives First Nations girls free opportunities to experience scientific mountain expeditions. In her free time, she blows glass and plays the mandolin.</p>
<p>Why the mandolin? “It’s very portable,” she says, “and I can take it on trips.”</p>
<p><em>This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/mit-news/2017/07/" target="_blank">July/August&nbsp;2017 issue</a></em><em>&nbsp;of&nbsp;</em>MIT Technology Review<em>&nbsp;magazine.</em></p>
Alison Criscitiello PhD '14 summits Mount Logan, Canada’s highest mountain, in May 2016 after ice coring nearby in the Yukon Territory.Photo: Vincent LarochelleEAPS, School of Science, Oceanography and ocean engineering, Alumni/ae, GeologySaving Venice, MIT-stylehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/saving-venice-mit-style-0823
MISTI interns and MIT faculty tackle rising sea level challenges at Italian research camp this summer.Wed, 23 Aug 2017 12:15:15 -0400Lily Keyes | MISTIhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/saving-venice-mit-style-0823<p>This summer, MIT professors Paola Malanotte Rizzoli of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) and Andrew Whittle of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) led an intensive workshop with several Italian faculty exploring key challenges facing Venice. Ten MIT students and seven students from the University of Venice (IUAV) joined their engineering and urban planning expertise during the first two weeks at a research camp in Pellestrina, a small island in the Venetian Lagoon. Donning fluorescent orange vests and hard hats, the bilingual group worked in a pop-up classroom on a live construction site for the massive flood gates built to protect Venice from high waters.</p>
<p>Through a combination of lectures, interviews with local residents, and on-site visits to observe the city's Experimental Electromechanical Module (MOSE) floodgates in action, MIT and IUAV students set to work developing solutions to pressing engineering and climate change challenges.</p>
<p>Rizzoli explained the dynamics of rising sea levels, storm surges, and wind waves in the Venetian Lagoon under various climate change circumstances. IUAV Professor Laura Fregolent discussed depopulation, another major threat to Venice. Looking at solutions, Whittle compared the novel technology of the MOSE gates with about 15 major storm surge barriers worldwide. MIT students speculated about the risk of flooding back home, and what could be learned from the MOSE project as Boston considers building a four-mile barrier restricting the flow of water into the city.</p>
<p>Outside of the classroom, camp participants were treated to what Whittle describes as “an engineer’s delight” — the opportunity to observe the precise positioning of a 95-foot-long steel gate through four underwater cameras. Rising MIT junior Malik Coville enthusiastically concurred. “As a mechanical engineer, typically we tend to mess with smaller technologies in class,” he explains. “This is the first time I was introduced to something much larger.”</p>
<p>After the first week, MIT and IUAV students bridged divides across cultures and disciplines through field work, data collection, and big-picture ideas. One group performed statistical and spatial analysis of flood risk in the Venetian Lagoon and analyzed historical data to create projections for the years 2050 and 2100. Another group formed a think-tank to develop repopulation strategies, formulating plans to refurbish urban workspaces with 21st century technology and self-sustaining energy systems. They also created strategies to involve local students in community development by collaborating with Italian universities. A third group conducted extensive mapping and interviews to explore the impact and the perception of the MOSE project among Pellestrina’s inhabitants.</p>
<p>Paige Midstokke, MIT grad student in civil engineering and technology and policy, worked on mapping and data analysis, and appreciated her group’s multicultural, multidisciplinary composition. “It’s a really interesting group, a mix of Italian and U.S. university students with different styles of working and different perspectives on this place,” Midstokke said.</p>
<p>Of the 10 MIT students who participated in the research camp, eight stayed for an additional two-month period to continue their research. Hosted by IUAV and Consorzio Venezia Nuova, they continued to work on meteorological statistical models, urban issues, and prototyping an electrical system to control the MOSE floodgates. Thanks to their extensive contacts with Italian experts and locals, the MIT students came to view Venice not only as a unique research lab, but also as a deeply-rooted way of life. They embraced the urgency of the problems and the applied character of their research. “For one, it’s the most hands-on thing that we’ve ever dealt with,” Coville said. “We’re applying what we’re learning to actually save a city.”</p>
<p>Rizzoli, in agreement with Whittle, the Italian partners, and MIT-Italy Program Co-Director Serenella Sferza, praises the initiative as “successful beyond expectations.” She is working with EAPS, CEE, and all others involved to replicate the workshop next summer. “This is an exemplary prototype of how a global classroom should work,” Rizzoli says.</p>
<p>The students who participated in this year’s pilot experience will present their research, made possible by support from IROP, other academic grants, and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI), on Sept. 8 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in <a href="https://whereis.mit.edu/?go=54" target="_blank">Room 54-915</a> within the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.</p>
<p>Based in the <a href="https://cis.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Center for International Studies</a>, a program of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (<a href="https://shass.mit.edu/" target="_blank">SHASS</a>), MISTI is MIT’s pioneering international education initiative.&nbsp;</p>
MIT students, students from the University of Venice, and faculty members from both institutions pose in front of Venice's experimental floodgates as part of a collaborative summer workshop. Photo: Lily KeyesClasses and programs, International initiatives, MISTI, SHASS, Global, Civil and environmental engineering, Europe, Italy, History, School of Engineering, School of Science, Architecture, EAPS, STEM education, Workshops, Climate, Climate change, CollaborationAncient Earth’s hot interior created “graveyard” of continental slabshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/ancient-earth-hot-interior-graveyard-continental-slabs-0822
Higher mantle temperatures caused subducting tectonic plates to sink much further than they do today.Tue, 22 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400Jennifer Chu | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/ancient-earth-hot-interior-graveyard-continental-slabs-0822<p>Plate tectonics has shaped the Earth’s surface for billions of years: Continents and oceanic crust have pushed and pulled on each other, continually rearranging the planet’s façade. As two massive plates collide, one can give way and slide under the other in a process called subduction. The subducted slab then slips down through the Earth’s viscous mantle, like a flat stone through a pool of honey.</p>
<p>For the most part, today’s subducting slabs can only sink so far, to about 670 kilometers below the surface, before the mantle’s makeup turns from a honey-like consistency, to that of paste — too dense for most slabs to penetrate further. Scientists have suspected that this density filter existed in the mantle for most of Earth’s history. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Now, however, geologists at MIT have found that this density boundary was much less pronounced in the ancient Earth’s mantle, 3 billion years ago. In a paper published in <em>Earth and Planetary Science Letters, </em>the researchers note that the ancient Earth harbored a mantle that was as much as 200 degrees Celsius hotter than it is today — temperatures that may have brewed up more uniform, less dense material throughout the entire mantle layer.</p>
<p>The researchers also found that, compared with today’s rocky material, the ancient crust was composed of much denser stuff, enriched in iron and magnesium. The combination of a hotter mantle and denser rocks likely caused subducting plates to sink all the way to the bottom of the mantle, 2,800 kilometers below the surface, forming a “graveyard” of slabs atop the Earth’s core.</p>
<p>Their results paint a very different picture of subduction than what occurs today, and suggests that the Earth’s ancient mantle was much more efficient in drawing down pieces of the planet’s crust.</p>
<p>“We find that around 3 billion years ago, subducted slabs would have remained more dense than the surrounding mantle, even in the transition zone, and there’s no reason from a buoyancy standpoint why slabs should get stuck there. Instead, they should always sink through, which is a much less common case today,” says lead author Benjamin Klein, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “This seems to suggest there was a big change going back in Earth’s history in terms of how mantle convection and plate tectonic processes would have happened.”</p>
<p>Klein’s co-authors are Oliver Jagoutz, associate professor in EAPS, and Mark Behn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.</p>
<p><strong>Temperature difference</strong></p>
<p>“There’s this open question as to when plate tectonics really started in Earth’s history,” Klein says. “There’s general consensus that it was probably going on back at least 3 billion years ago. This is also when most models suggest the Earth was at its hottest.”</p>
<p>Around 3 billion years ago, the mantle was probably about 150-200 C warmer than it is today. Klein, Jagoutz, and Behn investigated whether hotter temperatures in the Earth’s interior made a difference in how tectonic plates, once subducted, were transported through the mantle.</p>
<p>“Our work started as this thought experiment to say, if we know temperatures were much hotter, how might that have modulated what the tectonics looked like, without changing it wholesale?” Klein says. “Because the debate before was this binary argument: Either there was plate tectonics, or there wasn’t, and we’re suggesting there’s more room in between.”</p>
<p><strong>A “density flip”</strong></p>
<p>The team carried out its analysis, making the assumption that plate tectonics was indeed shaping the Earth’s surface 3 billion years ago. They looked to compare the density of subducting slabs at that time with the density of the surrounding mantle, the difference of which would determine how far slabs would have sunk.</p>
<p>To estimate the density of ancient slabs, Klein compiled a large dataset of more than 1,400 previously analyzed samples of both modern rocks and komatiites — classic rock types that were around 3 billion years ago but are no longer produced today. These rocks contain a higher amount of dense iron and magnesium compared to today’s oceanic crust. Klein used the composition of each rock sample to calculate the density of a typical subducting slab, for both the modern day and 3 billion years ago.</p>
<p>He then estimated the average temperature of a modern versus an ancient subducting slab, relative to the temperature of the surrounding mantle. He reasoned that the distance a slab sinks depends on not only its density but also its temperature relative to the mantle: The colder an object is relative to its surroundings, the faster and further it should sink.</p>
<p>The team used a thermodynamic model to determine the density profile of each subducting slab, or how its density changes as it sinks through the mantle, given the mantle’s temperature, which they took from others’ estimates and a model of the slab’s temperature. From these calculations, they determined the depth at which each slab would become less dense than the surrounding mantle.</p>
<p>At this point, they hypothesized that a “density flip” should occur, such that a slab should not be able to sink past this boundary.</p>
<p>“There seems to be this critical filter and control on the movement of slabs and therefore convection of the mantle,” Klein says.</p>
<p><strong>A final resting place</strong></p>
<p>The team found that their estimates for where this boundary occurs in the modern mantle — about 670 kilometers below the surface — agreed with actual measurements taken of this transition zone today, confirming that their method may also accurately estimate the ancient Earth.</p>
<p>“Today, when slabs enter the mantle, they are denser than the ambient mantle in the upper and lower mantle, but in this transition zone, the densities flip,” Klein says. “So within this small layer, the slabs are less dense than the mantle, and are happy to stay there, almost floating and stagnant.”</p>
<p>For the ancient Earth, 3 billion years ago, the researchers found that, because the ancient mantle was so much hotter than today, and the slabs much denser, a density flip would not have occurred. Instead, subducting slabs would have sunk straight to the bottom of the mantle, establishing their final resting place just above the Earth’s core.</p>
<p>Jagoutz says the results suggest that sometime between 3 billion years ago and today, as the Earth’s interior cooled, the mantle switched from a one-layer convection system, in which slabs flowed freely from upper to lower layers of the mantle, to a two-layer configuration, where slabs had a harder time penetrating through to the lower mantle.</p>
<p>“This shows that when a planet starts to cool down, this boundary, even though it’s always there, becomes a significantly more profound density filter,” Jagoutz says. “We don’t know what will happen in the future, but in theory, it’s possible the Earth goes from one dominant regime of one-layer convection, to two. And that’s part of the evolution of the entire Earth.”</p>
<p>This research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation.</p>
New findings suggest the ancient Earth harbored a mantle that was much more efficient at drawing down pieces of the planet’s crust.Image: MIT NewsEAPS, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Geology, Research, School of Science, National Science Foundation (NSF)Investigating space weather effects of the 2017 solar eclipsehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-haystack-observatory-investigates-space-weather-effects-solar-eclipse-0817
Atmospheric scientists at the MIT Haystack Observatory will study North American eclipse effects on space weather with radar and navigational satellites.Thu, 17 Aug 2017 10:40:01 -0400Haystack Observatoryhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-haystack-observatory-investigates-space-weather-effects-solar-eclipse-0817<p>On Aug. 21, a solar eclipse will occur over the United States. Hotels throughout the 70-mile-wide path of totality from Oregon to South Carolina have been completely booked by amateur astronomers and excited skywatchers. Even outside the path of totality, a partial solar eclipse will take place across the entire continental U.S. Scientists at MIT are taking advantage of this rare event to study its effects on weather in the near-Earth space around our planet, a place directly affected by our nearest star — the sun.</p>
<p>MIT’s Haystack Observatory is <a href="https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/science-ground" target="_blank">one of several institutions</a>&nbsp;whose ground-based eclipse research has been funded by NASA. A team led by Haystack Assistant Director Phil Erickson will investigate the effects of the eclipse on the Earth’s ionosphere, using the National Science Foundation-supported Millstone Hill incoherent scatter radar facility in Westford, Massachusetts, together with an extensive network of ground-based GPS receivers, National Science Foundation Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/services/missions/earth/TIMED.html" target="_blank">NASA's TIMED satellite mission</a>.</p>
<p>Scientists at Haystack will also monitor supplementary GPS signal collection sites within the path of totality to augment existing receivers during the eclipse. These additional GPS receiver sites will collect data at a special, advanced rate before, during, and after the eclipse. Data will be added to a worldwide observation set gathered from the network of GPS and other navigational satellite systems that surround the Earth, providing valuable information on the atmospheric changes that occur during the eclipse.</p>
<p>“The most exciting thing about the eclipse for scientists is that we’ll be able to monitor this event in incredible detail, using a combination of high-precision satellite networks all along the path of totality,” says Anthea Coster, Haystack Observatory assistant director. “The specially equipped receivers we’re placing across the continent will enable us to gather data of unprecedented quality.”</p>
<p>Haystack researchers will study the eclipse’s effects on the ionosphere, the charged part of the Earth’s upper atmosphere that is created daily by solar radiation on the upper neutral atmosphere. Essential communications and navigational satellite systems are located above the ionosphere, and geomagnetic storms have the potential to disrupt these systems as well as our electrical power grids. By studying the effects of the eclipse on the ionosphere, we can learn more about the atmospheric response to solar flares and other space weather events.</p>
<p>During the eclipse the sun will, in effect, turn off and back on very quickly, potentially causing waves called traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs). Both hemispheres are affected by such ionospheric events, due to electrical coupling across hemispheres. Research during this eclipse will involve much more precise and better distributed ground-based monitoring tools than ever before, in combination with GPS and other satellite overflights.</p>
<p>Haystack will <a href="http://www.haystack.mit.edu/eclipse.html" target="_blank">livestream changes in the ionosphere</a> as seen by the Millstone Hill radar data on the day of the eclipse, along with a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTMFI03t3zJQzkHPdVo5d-A" target="_blank">live optical feed</a> of the sun’s disk from MIT Wallace Observatory. Haystack and Wallace are also co-hosting an eclipse-watching event in Westford. The event is currently at maximum capacity, but Cambridge-based eclipse watchers can participate in the <a href="https://eapsweb.mit.edu/solar-eclipse-2017" target="_blank">on-campus event</a> hosted by the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences or other local viewing events.</p>
<p>Please note: Eye protection is essential for all eclipse viewers, as well as for your camera lens. Never look directly at the sun during the eclipse, and remind children of the danger! If you are using your own solar glasses, be sure to first consult the <a href="https://eclipse.aas.org/resources/solar-filters" target="_blank">American Astronomical Society list of reputable vendors</a> of solar viewing products.</p>
The Millstone Hill radar facility at MIT Haystack Observatory in Westford, MassachusettsImage: Shun-Rong Zhang/MIT Haystack ObservatoryResearch, Space, astronomy and planetary science, Radar, Haystack Observatory, Earth and atmospheric sciences, NASA, Astronomy, National Science Foundation (NSF)Study: For food-waste recycling, policy is keyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/study-food-waste-recycling-policy-key-0817
Successful programs aren’t limited to well-off towns with strong environmental movements.Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/study-food-waste-recycling-policy-key-0817<p>Food scraps. Okay, those aren’t the first words that come to mind when you think about the environment. But 22 percent of the municipal solid waste dropped into landfills or incincerators in the U.S. is, in fact, food that could be put to better use through composting and soil enrichment.</p>
<p>Moreover, food-scrap recycling programs, while still relatively uncommon, are having a growth moment in the U.S.; they’ve roughly doubled in size since 2010. Now, a national study by MIT researchers provides one of the first in-depth looks at the characteristics of places that have adopted food recycling, revealing several new facts in the process.</p>
<p>For instance: The places deploying food-scrap recycling programs are located throughout the country, not just in well-off coastal areas with popular environmental movements.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to be Seattle to have really good waste management,” says Lily Baum Pollans PhD ’17, a recent doctoral graduate of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and corresponding author of the new paper outlining the study’s results.</p>
<p>Significantly, cities with food-scrap recycling often have “pay as you throw” garbage collection policies (PAYT), which typically charge residents for exceeding a certain volume of trash. These programs make people more active participants in waste collection by having them limit and sort garbage. Thus, adopting PAYT paves the way for food-scrap recycling.</p>
<p>“Having a ‘pay as you throw’ policy seems to make everything else easier,” says Jonathan S. Krones PhD ’16, a visiting scholar in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering and a graduate of MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.</p>
<p>The paper, “Patterns in municipal food scrap programming in mid-sized U.S. cities,” has been published online in the journal Resources, Conservation, and Recycling, where it will also appear in print. The research brings together multiple disciplines; the authors are Pollans, Krones, and Professor Eran Ben-Joseph, who is head of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.</p>
<p><strong>Food for thought</strong></p>
<p>Food-scrap recycling has multiple benefits. Food scraps can be used for composting, which enriches soil and reduces emissions of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from landfills. It also significantly reduces the volume of landfill needed in a given area. And recycling food can save cities and towns money by lowering the needed frequency of trash collection.</p>
<p>“If you remove food from your waste stream, you no longer have to remove garbage so often,” Krones says.</p>
<p>About one-third of all trash in the U.S. is recycled, a level that has held steady in the U.S. in recent years. But since 2010, the food-scrap recycling rate has increased from 2.7 percent to 5.1 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Still, there is clearly room for greater adoption of the practice.</p>
<p>“The food system is notoriously wasteful at all levels,” the authors write in the paper.</p>
<p>To understand that system better, the researchers in 2015 conducted a survey of 115 mid-sized U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000 but less than 1 million. Places of that size almost always direct their own waste and recycling policies (which in some smaller municipalities are handled at the county level).</p>
<p>In all, 46 of the 115 cities have active food-scrap recycling programs of various forms, including educational programs, low-cost home composting bins, drop-off facilities, and curbside collection of food. By studying those cities, the researchers identified key characteristics of places that have adopted food recycling — which can then inform other cities and towns about the viability of the practice.</p>
<p>For instance, food-scrap recycling occurs in areas not strongly associated with recycling programs in general: Over 35 percent of the cities surveyed spanning a large portion of the South have some form of food-scrap diversion program (including education and outreach efforts), along with six out of 10 cities in a large portion of the Midwest.</p>
<p>“This doesn’t have to be a specialty boutique program,” says Pollans, who is now an assistant professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College.</p>
<p>Indeed, the researchers discovered that multiple economic and social factors, including income levels, seem to have negligible correlation with a place’s tendency to adopt food-scrap recycling. It is not as if wealthier, prosperous enclaves of people recycle food as a feel-good initiative.</p>
<p>“Really, these socioeconomic characteristics aren’t relevant,” Krones says.</p>
<p>Instead, a notable factor that predicts adoption of food-scrap recycling, other things being equal, is the existence of PAYT trash collection. This strongly suggests that such programs get residents in the habit of actively managing their trash disposal in response to financial incentives — and, as such, makes it seem less burdensome to separate food from other kinds of trash.</p>
<p>“This finding should make economists happy,” Krones quips.</p>
<p>And as the researchers write in the paper, this suggests that “investing first in PAYT would mean that future diversion [meaning recycling] programs are more likely to be successful,” because they will be part of a “holistic policy vision” for trash.</p>
<p><strong>Another form of infrastructure</strong></p>
<p>As the researchers readily acknowledge, the long-term success of these food-scrap recycling programs — and not just their adoption — is an important consideration in need of further study. To that end, they are currently working on studies that look in more detail at the local political factors that lead to the adoption of food-scrap recycling, and at the bottom-line effectiveness of the programs themselves.</p>
<p>Still, as Ben-Joseph notes, it is important to give waste disposal the same empirical attention that other, higher-profile elements of trash, recycling, and infrastructure receive.</p>
<p>“Most people don’t think of solid waste as part of our infrastructure systems,” Ben-Joseph says. “There is an interest in water, sewer, electricity … but solid waste is a diffused structure which is hard to decipher. With this study we tried to understand and map what is taking place in over 100 cities across the country.”</p>
<p>Moreover, Pollans contends, “It is important to ask what the capacity of cities is in creating environmental transformations, given the lack of policy initiatives at higher levels of government.”</p>
<p>Funding for the research was provided by the Environmental Solutions Initiative at MIT, a multidisciplinary program that advances research and education on issues of the environment and sustainability.</p>
<p>The research project was initiated under the direction of the late professor Judith Layzer of MIT, whose influential work often examined the dynamics of environmental politics.</p>
A national study by MIT researchers provides one of the first in-depth looks at the characteristics of places that have adopted food recycling, revealing several new facts in the process. School of Architecture and Planning, Climate change, Environment, Energy, Greenhouse gases, Engineering Systems, Infrastructure, Renewable energy, Urban studies and planning, DMSE, IDSSCase study suggests new approach to urban water supplyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/drought-remedy-keep-infrastructure-fast-cheap-under-control-0814
One drought remedy: Keep infrastructure fast, cheap, and under control.Mon, 14 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/drought-remedy-keep-infrastructure-fast-cheap-under-control-0814<p>If you live in the developed world, safe water is usually just a faucet-turn away. And yet, global warming, drought conditions, and population growth in coming decades could change that, ushering in an era of uncertain access to water.</p>
<p>Now an MIT-based research team has evaluated those potential problems and, based on a case study in Australia, suggested an alternate approach to water planning. In a new paper, the researchers find there is often a strong case for building relatively modest, incremental additions to water infrastructure in advanced countries, rather than expensive larger-scale projects that may be needed only rarely.</p>
<p>More specifically, the study looks at the city of Melbourne, where a 12-year drought from 1997 to 2009 led to construction of a $5 billion facility, the Victorian Desalination Plant. It was approved in 2007 and opened in 2012 — at a time when the drought had already receded. As a result, the plant has barely been used, and its inactivity, combined with its hefty price tag, has generated considerable controversy.</p>
<p>As an alternative, the study suggests, smaller, modular desalination plants could have met Melbourne’s needs at a lower price.</p>
<p>“If you build too much infrastructure, you’re building hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in assets you might not need,” says Sarah Fletcher, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), who is the lead author of the new paper.</p>
<p>To be sure, Fletcher adds, “You don’t want to be in a situation where you have less water supply than you have demand.” As such, the study does not argue that a single solution applies to all cases, but presents a new method for pinpointing the best plan — and notes that in many cases, “moderate investment increases, together with flexible infrastructure design, can mitigate water-shortage risk significantly.”</p>
<p>The new paper, “Water Supply Infrastructure Planning: Decision-Making Framework to Classify Multiple Uncertainties and Evaluate Flexible Design,” was recently published online in the <em>Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management</em>, and will appear in the October 2017 print volume.</p>
<p>The co-authors are Fletcher, who is also affiliated with MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change; Marco Miotti, a PhD student in IDSS; Jaichander Swaminathan, a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering; Magdalena Klemun, a PhD student in IDSS; Kenneth Strzepek, a research scientist at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and an emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Colorado; and Afreen Siddiqi, a research scientist in IDSS.</p>
<p>Siddiqi visited Melbourne during its historic drought and learned from local experts about the&nbsp;city’s challenging water-supply problem. The genesis of the current study comes from Siddiqi’s investigation into the Melbourne case and assessment that the complex problem of urban water security lies at the intersection of engineering design and strategic planning.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>The MIT team’s new framework for water-supply analysis incorporates several uncertainties that policymakers must confront in these cases, and runs large numbers of simulations of water availability over a 30-year period. It then presents planners with a decision tree about which infrastructure options are best calibrated to their needs.</p>
<p>The significant uncertainties include climate change and its effects on rainfall, as well as the impact of water shortages and population growth.</p>
<p>In studying the Melbourne case, the researchers looked at six infrastructure alternatives, including multiple types of desalination plants and a possible new pipeline to more-distant sources, and combinations of these things.</p>
<p>“The main methodological contribution for the paper is this framework to look at different uncertainties of different types and put that all together in one piece of analysis,” Fletcher says.</p>
<p>The results highlight a vexing problem in water-access planning: Shortages can be acute, but they may last for relatively short periods of time.</p>
<p>For instance, the team ran 100,000 simulations of 30-year conditions in Melbourne and found that in 80 percent of all years, there would be no water shortages at all. And yet, for the years where drought conditions did hold, large water shortages were more common than minor water shortages.</p>
<p>As a result, when costs were factored into the analysis, simply building no new infrastructure was the best option around 50 percent of the time. However, doing nothing was also the “worst-performing alternative” around 30 percent of the time.</p>
<p>That’s why the option of building smaller desalination plants can make sense. The Melboune plant that was built can produce 150 million cubic meters of water per year. But in the MIT team’s simulations, building a desalination plant half that size usually works well: It was the best-performing option in 20 percent of the simulations, and in the top three of 90 percent of the simulations. It was never, in all 100,000 simulations, the worst or second-worst-performing option.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Moreover, Fletcher points out, building smaller at first gives planners the ability to bring a new plant online more quickly and then scale up if needed.</p>
<p>“You only build a certain number of modules in the beginning, and you can add a certain number later,” Fletcher says. “That’s different than building a small plant and then another small plant. You’re being proactive and planning to adapt in the future.”</p>
<p>So thinking small, in this scenario, make considerable sense. But as the researchers acknowledge, the exact results of their study would likely vary from region to region, depending on all the climate and population factors that affect water supply.</p>
<p>Even so, they think their new study framework can at least help planners make the case that building on a smaller scale may position cities and countries best in the long run. Or, as Siddiqi puts it, “building on a smaller scale, but planning big” may be the optimal approach.</p>
<p>“We’re used to building large-scale desalination plants, and there’s less of history of building more modular plants,” Fletcher says. “It’s challenging because these are large investments with long lifetimes. But if you think of a modular plant as an insurance policy against drought, maybe you want to have it around.”</p>
Researchers have found there is often a strong case for building relatively modest, incremental additions to water infrastructure in advanced countries, rather than expensive larger-scale projects that may be needed only rarely.
Image: Christine Daniloff/MITSchool of Engineering, Climate change, IDDS, Infrastructure, Policy, Water, Desalination, Sustainability, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, ResearchUsing energy-based designs to enhance earthquake hazard resistancehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/using-energy-based-designs-to-enhance-earthquake-hazard-resistance-0810
International workshop funded by new MISTI Global Seed Fund showcases the potential of energy-based structural analysis and sensing.Thu, 10 Aug 2017 13:20:01 -0400Carolyn Schmitt | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineeringhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/using-energy-based-designs-to-enhance-earthquake-hazard-resistance-0810<p>By taking an innovative approach to designing recommendations for new buildings and structures, researchers at MIT are collaborating with researchers and engineers around the world to develop cost-effective, non-invasive tools and methods for observing and measuring a structure’s movement and energy, a paradigm referred to as “energy-based design” (EBD).</p>
<p>This summer, Professor Oral Buyukozturk of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, to direct a workshop on EBD, an emerging structural design and analysis concept.</p>
<p>The energy-based design concept considers earthquake effect as an energy input and looks at how this energy is distributed within the structure. If the structure is damaged, some of this energy would be dissipated. Buyukozturk, his research group, and collaborators from Boğaziçi University and Istanbul Technical University (ITU), are working together to develop tools and methods for observing and measuring a structure’s motion and energy components, in order to have a comprehensive understanding of how the structure would respond to an earthquake. The collaboration is funded by the MIT-Turkey - Boğaziçi University Seed Fund from MIT’s International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI), a recent addition to the <a href="http://misti.mit.edu/faculty-funds" target="_blank">MISTI Global Seed Funds</a>.</p>
<p>“A design paradigm for earthquake resistance based on this concept is more consistent with the physics of the system and provides more realistic assessment taking into account the duration of the earthquake as opposed to the current design methods that are based on displacements,” Buyukozturk says. “The purpose of the workshop is to advance this concept and verify its potential, through experimentation and analysis also making use of new sensing techniques developed at MIT, for better design of earthquake resilient structures.”</p>
<p>The workshop, called “Energy Based Structural Analysis and Sensing,” provided an open forum for researchers to share their various research and engineering experiences that can be integrated into the EBD paradigm, including sustainable construction materials, structural sensing, and damage detection.</p>
<p>This international research effort between the universities aims to provide a strong basis for new design recommendations and practical codes in enhancing earthquake hazard resistance of modern structures. The meeting, well-versed with participants from local universities and structural design and construction companies, offered ample opportunities for attendees to discuss the emerging paradigm and its potential for earthquake engineering.</p>
<p>“At MIT CEE, our research aims to solve the world’s greatest challenges in the areas of infrastructure and environment, and we collaborate broadly to understand complex issues and offer solutions,” says Markus Buehler, head of CEE and the McAfee Professor of Engineering. “By establishing international collaborations such those formed through Professor Buyukozturk’s Energy Based Structural Analysis and Sensing workshop, we are able to increase the impact of our novel research and developments.”</p>
<p><strong>Strength in numbers: Forming international collaborations </strong></p>
<p>At the workshop, members of Buyukozturk’s group, including postdocs Hao Sun and Justin Chen and graduate students Steven Palkovic, James Long, and Murat Uzun, presented comprehensive findings of their research, including advanced sensing technologies and data processing algorithms. The MIT research team also presented their recent developments on their video-based structural sensing and motion magnification. While in Turkey, the group used this technique to measure the vibration modes of the suspension bridge crossing the Istanbul Bosphorus and connecting Europe to Asia.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“It was a great opportunity to attend the workshop, exchanging ideas with our collaborators in Turkey. This workshop broadens the spectrum for further development of energy based design and analysis approaches through incorporating innovative sensing and data analytics techniques,” says Sun from Buyukozturk’s group. “The Boğaziçi campus venue is one of the most beautiful places in the world overseeing the Istanbul Bosphorus, and the food was incredible.”</p>
<p>Researchers from Boğaziçi and ITU also introduced their ongoing research findings from research on EBD. As a result of the information-sharing, Buyukozturk’s group and researchers from Boğaziçi and ITU were able to identify numerous areas potential for partnering on various related projects with several PhD topics.</p>
<p>“Visiting the two universities in Istanbul really facilitated the exchange of research ideas as well as the unique opportunity to conduct experiments in a world class earthquake structural testing facility,” says Chen.</p>
<p>In addition to research presentations, the workshop included experimental work on a powerful shake table, which simulated actual earthquake motions in shaking selected laboratory structures. In this process, the data acquisition systems used include the novel techniques developed by the MIT team, such as computer vision-based structural sensing. The event concluded with a final session allowing researchers and participants to discuss emerging research and development opportunities and future EBD tools and methods.</p>
<p>“This is a partnership of top institutions with enthusiastic and bright students promising game-changing innovations in the future,” Buyukozturk says.</p>
<p>The data collected during the workshop will be processed by the researchers from MIT, Boğaziçi, and ITU. This continued international collaboration is currently focused on analyzing initial findings, furthering the development of EBD and the eventual publication of their results and recommendations.</p>
<p>“MISTI looks forward to consolidating the MIT-Boğaziçi University collaboration through the next seed fund call, and&nbsp;to expanding the range of student and faculty opportunities it offers in Turkey,” says Serenella Sferza, co-director of the MIT-Italy Program and MIT-Turkey Pilot Program Lead.</p>
<p>The Energy Based Structural Analysis and Sensing event was held as part of a continued workshop series between MIT, Boğaziçi, and ITU. The next workshop is planned to be held at MIT, and Buyukozturk’s group will host collaborators from the Turkish partner universities. The workshop was organized in collaboration with Associate Professor Cem Yalcin of Boğaziçi and Associate Professor Ercan Yuksel of ITU and was made possible by the support and funding from MISTI and Limak Holding of Turkey.</p>
Members of the Buyukozturk group pose on the skydeck of the Engineering Building of Bogazici University, in Istanbul. Left to right: Murat Uzun, Justin Chen, MIT Professor Oral Buyukozturk, Hao Sun, and Steven Palkovic. The group traveled to Turkey to present their research as part of a collaborative workshop. International initiatives, MISTI, Civil and environmental engineering, Europe, Energy, Earthquakes, School of Engineering, SHASS, ResearchLunar dynamo’s lifetime extended by at least 1 billion yearshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/lunar-dynamo-lifetime-extended-least-1-billion-years-0809
Findings suggest two mechanisms may have powered the moon’s ancient churning, molten core. Wed, 09 Aug 2017 13:59:59 -0400Jennifer Chu | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/lunar-dynamo-lifetime-extended-least-1-billion-years-0809<p>New evidence from ancient lunar rocks suggests that an active dynamo once churned within the molten metallic core of the moon, generating a magnetic field that lasted at least 1 billion years longer than previously thought. Dynamos are natural generators of magnetic fields around terrestrial bodies, and are powered by&nbsp;the churning of conducting fluids within many stars and planets.</p>
<p>In a paper published today in <em>Science Advances</em>, researchers from MIT and Rutgers University report that a lunar rock collected by NASA’s Apollo 15 mission exhibits signs that it formed 1 to 2.5 billion years ago in the presence of a relatively weak magnetic field of about 5 microtesla. That’s around 10 times weaker than Earth’s current magnetic field but still 1,000 times larger than fields in interplanetary space today.</p>
<p>Several years ago, the same researchers identified 4-billion-year-old lunar rocks that formed under a much stronger field of about 100 microtesla, and they determined that the strength of this field dropped off precipitously around 3 billion years ago. At the time, the researchers were unsure whether the moon’s dynamo — the related magnetic field — died out shortly thereafter or lingered in a weakened state before dissipating completely.</p>
<p>The results reported today support the latter scenario: After the moon’s magnetic field dwindled, it nonetheless persisted for at least another billion years, existing for a total of at least 2 billion years.</p>
<p>Study co-author Benjamin Weiss, professor of planetary sciences in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), says this new extended lifetime helps to pinpoint the phenomena that powered the moon’s dynamo. Specifically, the results raise the possibility of two different mechanisms — one that may have driven an earlier, much stronger dynamo, and a second that kept the moon’s core simmering at a much slower boil toward the end of its lifetime.</p>
<p>“The concept of a planetary magnetic field produced by moving liquid metal is an idea that is really only a few decades old,” Weiss says. “What powers this motion on Earth and other bodies, particularly on the moon, is not well-understood. We can figure this out by knowing the lifetime of the lunar dynamo.”</p>
<p>Weiss’ co-authors are lead author Sonia Tikoo, a former MIT graduate student who is now an assistant professor at Rutgers; David Shuster of the University of California at Berkeley; Clément Suavet and Huapei Wang of EAPS; and Timothy Grove, the R.R. Schrock Professor of Geology and associate head of EAPS.</p>
<p><strong>Apollo’s glassy recorders</strong></p>
<p>Since NASA’s Apollo astronauts brought back samples from the lunar surface, scientists have found some of these rocks to be accurate “recorders” of the moon’s ancient magnetic field. Such rocks contain thousands of tiny grains that, like compass needles, aligned in the direction of ancient fields when the rocks crystallized eons ago. Such grains can give scientists a measure of the moon’s ancient field strength.</p>
<p>Until recently, Weiss and others had been unable to find samples much younger than 3.2 billion years old that could accurately record magnetic fields. As a result, they had only been able to gauge the strength of the moon’s magnetic field between 3.2 and 4.2 billion years ago.</p>
<p>“The problem is, there are very few lunar rocks that are younger than about 3 billion years old, because right around then, the moon cooled off, volcanism largely ceased and, along with it, formation of new igneous rocks on the lunar surface,” Weiss explains. “So there were no young samples we could measure to see if there was a field after 3 billion years.”</p>
<p>There is, however, a small class of rocks brought back from the Apollo missions that formed not from ancient lunar eruptions but from asteroid impacts later in the moon’s history. These rocks melted from the heat of such impacts and recrystallized in orientations determined by the moon’s magnetic field.</p>
<p>Weiss and his colleagues analyzed one such rock, known as Apollo 15 sample 15498, which was originally collected on Aug. 1, 1971, from the southern rim of the moon’s Dune Crater. The sample is a mix of minerals and rock fragments, welded together by a glassy matrix, the grains of which preserve records of the moon’s magnetic field at the time the rock was assembled.</p>
<p>“We found that this glassy material that welds things together has excellent magnetic recording properties,” Weiss says.</p>
<p><strong>Baking rocks</strong></p>
<p>The team determined that the rock sample was about 1 to 2.5 billion years old — much younger than the samples they previously analyzed. They developed a technique to decipher the ancient magnetic field recorded in the rock’s glassy matrix by first measuring the rock’s natural magnetic properties using a very sensitive magnetometer.</p>
<p>They then exposed the rock to a known magnetic field in the lab, and heated the rock to close to the extreme temperatures in which it originally formed. They measured how the rock’s magnetization changed as they increased the surrounding temperature.</p>
<p>“You see how magnetized it gets from getting heated in that known magnetic field, then you compare that field to the natural magnetic field you measured beforehand, and from that you can figure out what the ancient field strength was,” Weiss explains.</p>
<p>The researchers did have to make one significant adjustment to the experiment to better simulate the original lunar environment, and in particular, its atmosphere. While the Earth’s atmosphere contains around 20 percent oxygen, the moon has only imperceptible traces of the gas. In collaboration with Grove, Suavet built a customized, oxygen-deprived oven in which to heat the rocks, preventing them from rusting while at the same time simulating the oxygen-free environment in which the rocks were originally magnetized.</p>
<p>“In this way, we finally have gotten an accurate measurement of the lunar field,” Weiss says.</p>
<p><strong>From ice cream makers to lava lamps</strong></p>
<p>From their experiments, the researchers determined that, around 1 to 2.5 billion years ago, the moon harbored a relatively weak magnetic field, with a strength of about 5 microtesla — two orders of magnitude weaker than the moon’s field around 3 to 4 billion years ago. Such a dramatic dip suggests to Weiss and his colleagues that the moon’s dynamo may have been driven by two distinct mechanisms.</p>
<p>Scientists have proposed that the moon’s dynamo may have been powered by the&nbsp; Earth’s gravitational pull. Early in its history, the moon orbited much closer to the Earth, and the Earth’s gravity, in such close proximity, may have been strong enough to pull on and rotate the rocky exterior of the moon. The moon’s liquid center may have been dragged along with the moon’s outer shell, generating a very strong magnetic field in the process.</p>
<p>It’s thought that the moon may have moved sufficiently far away from the Earth by about 3 billion years ago, such that the power available for the dynamo by this mechanism became insufficient. This happens to be right around the time the moon’s magnetic field strength dropped. A different mechanism may have then kicked in to sustain this weakened field. As the moon moved away from the Earth, its core likely sustained a low boil via a slow process of cooling over at least 1 billion years.</p>
<p>“As the moon cools, its core acts like a lava lamp — low-density stuff rises because it’s hot or because its composition is different from that of the surrounding fluid,” Weiss says. “That’s how we think the Earth’s dynamo works, and that’s what we suggest the late lunar dynamo was doing as well.”</p>
<p>The researchers are planning to analyze even younger lunar rocks to determine when the dynamo died off completely.</p>
<p>“Today the moon’s field is essentially zero,” Weiss says. “And we now know it turned off somewhere between the formation of this rock and today.”</p>
<p>This research was supported, in part, by NASA.</p>
New measurements of lunar rocks have demonstrated that the ancient moon generated a dynamo magnetic field in its liquid metallic core (innermost red shell). The results raise the possibility of two different mechanisms — one that may have driven an earlier, much stronger dynamo, and a second that kept the moon’s core simmering at a much slower boil toward the end of its lifetime. Image: Hernán Cañellas (provided by Benjamin Weiss)Moon, Astronomy, Astrophysics, EAPS, Planetary science, Research, School of Science, Geology, NASA, Space, astronomy and planetary scienceSix from MIT awarded 2017 Fulbright grantshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/six-from-mit-awarded-fulbright-student-grants-0809
Grantees will spend the 2017-2018 academic year conducting research abroad.Wed, 09 Aug 2017 13:20:01 -0400Julia Mongo | Office of Distinguished Fellowshipshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/six-from-mit-awarded-fulbright-student-grants-0809<p>Three MIT graduate students and three recent alumni have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants to conduct independent research projects overseas during the coming academic year. In addition, a graduate student alumnus was named a Fulbright Finalist but declined the award.</p>
<p>The 2017-2018 Fulbright Students from MIT will engage in research projects in Germany, Austria, China, New Zealand, Mexico, and Poland.</p>
<p>The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and operates in over 160 countries worldwide. It is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement as well as record of service and leadership potential in their respective fields. The MIT winners are:</p>
<p><strong>James Deng '17</strong> graduated from MIT this spring with a BS in chemistry. During his Fulbright year in Germany, he will do research on epigenetics at the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich. Deng will be investigating the interactions and regulation of TET proteins, which are associated with cancer and other diseases.</p>
<p><strong>Jesse Feiman</strong> is an art history doctoral student in the History Theory and Criticism program within the School of Architecture and Planning. He will be spending his Fulbright year in Austria conducting archival research on the taxonomy system developed by the 18th century Viennese artist Adam von Bartsch. &nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Jessica Gordon</strong> is a doctoral student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her Fulbright research in China will examine how governmental policies affect climate change adaptation. She will be conducting her research in Inner Mongolia, Jiangxi, and Guizhou provinces.</p>
<p><strong>Jorlyn Le Garrec '17</strong> graduated this spring with a BS in mechanical and ocean engineering. As a Fulbright Student in New Zealand, she will pursue a research-based mechanical engineering master’s degree through the University of Auckland. Le Garrec’s research focuses on underwater robotics.</p>
<p><strong>Albert Lopez</strong> is an architectural history doctoral student in the History Theory and Criticism program within the School of Architecture and Planning. Lopez will be based in Mexico City, where he will use his Fulbright grant to investigate architects’ contributions to Mexican political society and the discourses of integration during the 1940s-1950s.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Jiwon Victoria Park '17</strong> graduated this spring with a BS in chemistry. She will be traveling to Poland to conduct research in organometallic chemistry at the Warsaw University of Technology. Park’s research has potential applications for drug delivery and electronic devices.</p>
Top row (l-r): James Deng, Jesse Feiman, Jessica Gordon. Bottom row: Jorlyn Le Garrec, Albert Lopez, Jiwon Victoria Park. Awards, honors and fellowships, Students, Undergraduate, Graduate, postdoctoral, Alumni/ae, Urban studies and planning, Mechanical engineering, Oceanography and ocean engineering, Chemistry, School of Architecture and Planning, School of Engineering, School of Science, Global, International initiativesMIT is set to upgrade its cogeneration plant, improving campus resiliencyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-upgrading-cogeneration-plant-to-improve-campus-resiliency-0807
Construction expected to begin this month.Mon, 07 Aug 2017 17:50:01 -0400Kristin Lund | MIT Facilitieshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-upgrading-cogeneration-plant-to-improve-campus-resiliency-0807<p>After months of preparation, MIT is planning to break ground this month on an upgrade project that will revitalize its Central Utilities Plant (CUP), a distributed energy resource (DER) that powers the campus microgrid with thermal and electric energy. The CUP upgrade is essential to the Institute’s sustainability goals and will improve campus resiliency by creating an enhanced, more efficient, more flexible power system. This in turn supports efforts in Massachusetts and neighboring states to build overall resiliency across the Northeast.</p>
<p>How does the project support these efforts? Improved campus resiliency at MIT takes pressure off the region’s utility grid — a system experiencing increasing demands and the growing frequency of severe weather events. The flexibility of MIT’s system is based in part on the fact that the campus microgrid can be coupled with the regional grid or can run independently as needed. MIT’s ability to operate on self-generated power in emergency situations will help local utilities meet customer demand and provide more reliable services.</p>
<div class="cms-placeholder-content-video"></div>
<p>“Localized distributed energy resources are becoming more crucial to any forward-thinking energy strategy,” says Ken Packard, director of utilities at MIT. “When it’s upgraded, MIT’s smart microgrid will enable MIT to take most or all of our load off the regional grid when necessary. This reduces pressure on the region’s infrastructure and at the same time makes it possible for us to protect the campus from a superstorm or other power outage event. In addition, we are optimizing the plant to provide the cleanest possible energy, whether we are generating it on campus or receiving it from the grid, especially as the grid becomes less carbon intensive.”</p>
<p><strong>A cleaner source for on-campus power</strong></p>
<p>Since 1995, the CUP has relied on a single 22-megawatt (MW) gas turbine — like the turbine that powers a jet engine — to produce electrical and thermal energy simultaneously through cogeneration, a combined heat and power process. The upgrade project will replace this aging turbine with a new one and install a second 22 MW gas turbine, each equipped with a heat recovery steam generator. In addition, the upgrade includes changing fuel use scenarios for five existing boilers to eliminate the use of No. 6 fuel oil on campus and equip them to use cleaner fuels such as natural gas or No. 2 fuel oil. The plant will switch to using natural gas for all normal operations, relegating fuel oil to backup emergency use only. Both new turbines are projected to be in service by 2020.</p>
<p>As it revitalizes the CUP and returns it to state-of-the-art condition, MIT expects to build campus resiliency by improving energy efficiency and increasing on-campus power capacity in support of MIT’s robust research activities. Resiliency is also built into the design of the upgrade, which anticipates evolving technologies and will enable the plant to incorporate future innovations that enhance campus sustainability.</p>
<p>The CUP’s efficiency and environmental gains will result from the installation of new and upgraded equipment as well as the switch to natural gas and the elimination of fuel oil use (except for emergencies). State-of-the-art emissions controls will contribute to the improvements. Starting in 2020, regulated pollutant emissions are expected to be more than 25 percent lower than 2014 emissions levels, and greenhouse gas emissions will be 10 percent lower than 2014 levels, offsetting a projected 10 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions due to energy demands created by new buildings and program growth.</p>
<p>The Institute’s preparation for the upgrade project involved a <a href="http://powering.mit.edu/project-permits" target="_blank">rigorous permitting process</a> that included working with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. On June 21, the project passed a major milestone when the DEP issued the final permit and plan approval stating that the new plant complies with state and federal air quality standards, enabling the project to move forward to construction.</p>
<p><strong>Envisioning the upgraded plant</strong></p>
<p>Upgrade plans for the CUP include building a new addition to the plant on the site of an existing parking lot along Albany Street (N10 Annex Lot). Carefully designed by Ellenzweig to fit the architecture of the surrounding community, the addition’s exterior will include windows that allow passersby to view the cogeneration plant’s operations.</p>
<p>Housing new equipment, the addition will connect with the existing plant via two overhead bridges, one of which will contain a control room that enables operators to run both sections of the plant from a single location. A presentation space in the new addition will enhance the CUP team’s ability to engage with students and researchers on <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-new-fund-allows-sustainability-researchers-use-campus-living-lab-0721" target="_self">living lab activities</a> and host learning opportunities for the broader community.</p>
<p>As part of the project, the streetscape along the perimeter of the plant will be improved with new lighting on public walkways as well as new public seating, bicycle racks, trees, and other plantings. The enhancements are designed to invite pedestrian traffic, creating a stronger connection between the main campus and the north campus.</p>
<p>The project also includes a rooftop system that will capture rainwater for use in the facility’s cooling towers, easing the burden on Cambridge’s storm water system. The perimeter site area will drain into rain gardens and through groundwater recharge.</p>
<p>“What’s unique about the design of this building is that it integrates an elegant exterior with the fundamental needs of the process and machinery inside,” notes Dave Brown, program manager of Utility Projects. “The architects worked closely with the Power Group at Vanderweil Engineers to create a complex solution that looks attractive and simple from the street. Inside, we’ll have very high-tech equipment and state-of-the-art controls, all fitting together in a way that accommodates the process and incorporates innovations. Outside, the pedestrian path is enhanced, and you’ll have the ability to walk by, look in, and see the plant in action.”</p>
<p><strong>Construction overview and activities</strong></p>
<p>The CUP upgrade project team is expecting to begin construction this month. Key equipment is scheduled for installation in 2018, and testing and commissioning is planned for late 2019. Full operation of the upgraded plant is projected for 2020.</p>
<p>In preparation for construction, the N10 and N10 Annex parking lots are closing, with permit holders relocated to other lots on campus. Construction activities expected to start in the next few weeks and continue through the spring of 2018 include site preparation and enabling, site excavation, utility work, and the construction of foundations. Pedestrian and vehicular navigation around the site will be maintained by short detours around the edge of the construction site. As the CUP upgrade project progresses, lane closures on the section of Albany Street in front of the construction site will be required for short periods of time. Police details will be on site to direct and maintain the flow of traffic and two-way access to the Albany Street garage will be maintained throughout construction.</p>
<p>Community members with questions about the CUP upgrade project may <a href="mailto:powering-mit@mit.edu?subject=MIT%20CUP%20upgrade%20query">contact the project team</a>. Updates will be posted to the <a href="http://powering.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Powering MIT project site</a>.</p>
Conceptual sketch of the upgraded Central Utilities Plant, as viewed from Albany StreetIllustration courtesy of Ellenzweig.Facilities, Campus buildings and architecture, Energy, Sustainability, Climate change, Renewable energy, Emissions, Oil and gasPhytoplankton and chipshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/phytoplankton-and-chips-support-for-darwin-project-data-processing-0804
Simons Foundation supports enhanced computer infrastructure for MIT&#039;s Darwin Project, which focuses on marine microbes and microbial communities. Fri, 04 Aug 2017 18:10:01 -0400Helen Hill | EAPShttps://news.mit.edu/2017/phytoplankton-and-chips-support-for-darwin-project-data-processing-0804<p>Microbes mediate the global marine cycles of elements, modulating atmospheric carbon dioxide and helping to maintain the oxygen we all breathe, yet there is much about them scientists still don’t understand. Now, an award from the Simons Foundation will give researchers from MIT's <a href="http://darwinproject.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Darwin Project</a> access to bigger, better computing resources to model these communities and probe how they work.</p>
<p>The simulations of plankton populations made by Darwin Project researchers have become increasingly computationally demanding. MIT Professor Michael "<a href="http://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/mick" target="_blank">Mick" Follows</a>&nbsp;and Principal Research Engineer <a href="https://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/cnh">Christopher Hill</a>, both affiliates of the Darwin Project, were therefore delighted to learn of their recent Simons Foundation award, providing them with enhanced compute infrastructure to help execute the simulations of ocean circulation, biogeochemical cycles, and microbial population dynamics that are the bread and butter of their research.</p>
<p>The Darwin Project,&nbsp;an alliance between oceanographers and microbiologists in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) and the&nbsp;<a href="https://cee.mit.edu/research/#Parsons" target="_blank">Parsons Lab</a> in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was conceived as an initiative to “advance the development and application of novel models of marine microbes and microbial communities, identifying the relationships of individuals and communities to their environment, connecting cellular-scale processes to global microbial community structure"&nbsp;with the goal of coupling “state of the art physical models of global ocean circulation with biogeochemistry and genome-informed models of microbial processes."</p>
<p>In response to increases in model complexity and resolution over the course of past decade since the project’s inception in 2007, computational demands have ballooned. Increased fidelity and algorithmic sophistication in both biological and fluid dynamical component models and forays into new statistical analysis approaches, leveraging big-data innovations to analyze the simulations and field data, have grown inexorably.</p>
<p>"The award allows us to grow our in-house computational and data infrastructure to accelerate and facilitate these new modeling capabilities," says Hill, who specializes in Earth and planetary computational science.</p>
<p>The boost in computational infrastructure the award provides for will advance several linked areas of research, including the capacity to model marine microbial systems in more detail, enhanced fidelity of the modeled fluid dynamical environment, support for state of the art data analytics including machine learning techniques, and accelerating and extending genomic data processing capabilities.</p>
<p>High diversity is a ubiquitous aspect of marine microbial communities that is not fully understood and, to date, is rarely resolved in simulations. Darwin Project researchers have broken new ground and continue to push the envelope in modeling in this area: In addition to resolving a much larger number of phenotypes and interactions than has typically been attempted by other investigators, the Darwin Project team has also been increasing the fidelity of the underlying physiological sub-models which define traits and trade-offs.</p>
<p>"One thing we are doing is implementing simplified metabolic models which resolve additional constraints [electron and energy conservation] and higher fidelity [dynamic representations of macro-molecular and elemental composition]," says Fellows. "These advances require more state variables per phenotype. We have also an explicit radiative transfer model that allows us to better exploit satellite remote sensing data but both come at a greater computational expense.” Darwin researchers are also expanding their models to resolve not only phototrophic and grazer communities in the surface ocean, but to include heterotrophic&nbsp;and chemo-autotrophic populations throughout the water column.</p>
<p>Follows and Hill believe these advances will provide better fidelity to real world observations, a more dynamic and fundamental description of marine microbial communities and biogeochemical cycles, and the potential to examine the underlying drivers and significance of diversity in the system.</p>
<p>"Much of the biological action in the surface ocean occurs at scales currently unresolved in most biogeochemical simulations,” Follows explains. “Numerical models and recent observations show that the sub-mesoscale motions in the ocean have a profound impact on the supply of resources to the surface and the dispersal and communication between different populations. The integral impact of this, and how to properly parameterize it, is not yet clear, but one approach, that is within reach, is to resolve these scales of motion nested within global simulations,"</p>
<p>Hill and Follows hope such advances will allow them to examine both local and regionally integrated effects of fine-scale physical drivers. "We have already completed a full annual cycle numerical simulation that resolves physical processes down to kilometer scales globally," says Hill. “Such simulations provide a basis for driving targeted modeling of, for example, the role of fronts that may involve fully non-hydrostatic dynamics and that could help explain in-situ measurements that suggest enhanced growth rates under such conditions.” Such work is strongly complementary to another Simons Foundation sponsored project, the Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology (SCOPE). As an initiative to&nbsp;advance our understanding of the biology, ecology, and biogeochemistry of microbial processes that dominate Earth’s largest biome — the global ocean — SCOPE seeks to measure, model, and conduct experiments at a model ecosystem site located 100 km north of the Hawaiian island of Oahu that is representative of a large portion of the North Pacific Ocean.</p>
<p>The team has also already implemented algorithms to enable explicit modeling of the relevant fluid dynamics, but here too, the approaches are computationally demanding. "The improved facilities this award provides will enable these extremely demanding experiments to proceed," says Follows.</p>
<p>Enhanced computer resources will also allow Darwin Project researchers to more effectively utilize data analytics. "We are adopting multiple statistical approaches for classifying fluid dynamical and ecosystem features in observations and in simulations which we plan to apply to biogeochemical problems," says Hill.&nbsp;“One current direction, which employs random forest classification to identify features corresponding to training sets, is showing particular promise for objectively quantifying links between biogeochemical event occurrence and physical environment phenomena.”</p>
<p>Not only will&nbsp;these methods provide useful analysis tools for their simulations, the pair also see them bridging to real world interpretations of, for example, metagenomics surveys in the ocean. Follows and Hill see this direction as a route by which to bring simulations and observations closer in new and meaningful ways. The growth in computational infrastructure the Simons award allows for, creates the potential for making much larger queries across more realistic datasets.</p>
<p>The Darwin Project is part of a long and fruitful collaboration with Institute Professor <a href="http://chisholmlab.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Sallie "Penny" Chisholm</a> of MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Steady growth in available large-scale metagenomic and single-cell genomic data resulting from genetics data activities in the Chisholm Lab are also driving additional computational processing resource needs.</p>
<p>With the new Simons-supported enhancements in computational infrastructure, Darwin Project collaborators in the Chisholm Lab will be able to tackle assembly from larger metagenomic libraries and single-cell genome phylogenies using maximum likelihood and/or Bayesian algorithms. Currently, some large metagenomics assembly activities require compute resources with more memory than this team has readily had available. "Single-cell genome phylogeny activities are computationally demanding and require dedicating compute resources for weeks or months at a time, Hill explains. “This creates a bottleneck for other work. To accelerate work in these areas additional compute resources, some with larger memory than current resources and some with GPU accelerators are going to be hugely beneficial. The new systems will permit larger metagenomics library assembly than is currently possible."</p>
Image: EAPSGrants, Industry, Oceanography and ocean engineering, Ocean science, Microbes, Computer science and technology, Analytics, Computer modeling, Climate, EAPS, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Environment, Civil and environmental engineering, School of Science, School of EngineeringDeadly heat waves could hit South Asia this centuryhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/deadly-heat-waves-could-hit-south-asia-century-0802
Without action, climate change could devastate a region home to one-fifth of humanity, study finds.Wed, 02 Aug 2017 14:00:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/deadly-heat-waves-could-hit-south-asia-century-0802<p>In South Asia, a region of deep poverty where one-fifth of the world’s people live, new research suggests that by the end of this century climate change could lead to summer heat waves with levels of heat and humidity that exceed what humans can survive without protection.</p>
<p>There is still time to avert such severe warming if measures are implemented now to reduce the most dire consequences of global warming. However, under business-as-usual scenarios, without significant reductions in carbon emissions, the study shows these deadly heat waves could begin within as little as a few decades to strike regions of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, including the fertile Indus and Ganges river basins that produce much of the region’s food supply.</p>
<p>The new findings, based on detailed computer simulations using the best available global circulation models, are described this week in the journal <em>Science Advances, </em>in a paper by Elfatih Eltahir, the Breene M. Kerr Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT; Eun Soon Im, a former researcher at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and now a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; and Jeremy Pal, a professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.</p>
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<p>The study follows an <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2015/study-persian-gulf-deadly-heat-1026">earlier report</a> by Eltahir and his team that looked at projected heat waves in the Persian Gulf region. While the number of extreme-heat days projected for that region was even worse than for South Asia, Eltahir says the impact in the latter area could be vastly more severe. That’s because while the Persian Gulf area has a relatively small, relatively wealthy population and little agricultural land, the areas likely to be hardest hit in northern India, Bangladesh, and southern Pakistan are home to 1.5 billion people. These areas are also among the poorest in the region, with much of the population dependent on subsistence farming that requires long hours of hard labor out in the open and unprotected from the sun.</p>
<p>“That makes them very vulnerable to these climatic changes, assuming no mitigation,” says Eltahir, who spoke with <em>MIT News</em> from Singapore, where he is carrying out follow-up research on potential climate effects in that area.</p>
<p>While the projections show the Persian Gulf may become the region of the worst heat waves on the planet, northern India is a close second, Eltahir says, and eastern China, also densely populated, is third. But the highest concentrations of heat in the Persian Gulf would be out over the waters of the Gulf itself, with lesser levels over inhabited land.</p>
<p>The new analysis is based on recent research showing that hot weather’s most deadly effects for humans comes from a combination of high temperature and high humidity, an index which is measured by a reading known as wet-bulb temperature. This reflects the ability of moisture to evaporate, which is the mechanism required for the human body to maintain its internal temperature through the evaporation of sweat. At a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), the human body cannot cool itself enough to survive more than a few hours.</p>
<p>A previous study of temperature and humidity records show that in today’s climate, wet-bulb temperatures have rarely exceeded about 31 C anywhere on Earth. While the earlier report from Eltahir and his colleagues showed that this survivability limit would start to be exceeded occasionally in the Persian Gulf region by the end of this century, actual readings there in the summer of 2015 showed that the 35-degree wet-bulb limit had almost been reached already, suggesting that such extremes could begin happening earlier than projected. The summer of 2015 also produced one of the deadliest heat waves in history in South Asia, killing an estimated 3,500 people in Pakistan and India.</p>
<p>And yet, India and China remain two countries where emission rates of greenhouse gases continue to rise, driven mostly by economic growth, Eltahir says. “So I think these results pose a dilemma for countries like India. Global warming is not just a global problem — for them, they will have some of the hottest spots” on the planet. In fact, a separate study by researchers at the University of California at Irvine and elsewhere, published recently also in <em>Scientific Advances</em>, reached similar conclusions based on a different kind of analysis using recent weather records.</p>
<p>That paper was “complementary to ours, which is based on modeling,” Eltahir says. The new analysis looked at results from three of the more than 20 comprehensive global climate models, which were selected because they most accurately matched actual weather data from the South Asian region. The study shows that by century’s end, absent serious reductions in global emissions, the most extreme, once-in-25-years heat waves would increase from wet-bulb temperatures of about 31 C to 34.2 C. “It brings us close to the threshold” of survivability, he says, and “anything in the 30s is very severe.”</p>
<p>In today’s climate, about 2 percent of the Indian population sometimes gets exposed to extremes of 32-degree wet-bulb temperatures. According to this study, by 2100 that will increase to about 70 percent of the population, and about 2 percent of the people will sometimes be exposed to the survivability limit of 35 degrees. And because the region is important agriculturally, it’s not just those directly affected by the heat who will suffer, Eltahir says: “With the disruption to the agricultural production, it doesn’t need to be the heat wave itself that kills people. Production will go down, so potentially everyone will suffer.”</p>
<p>But while the study provides a grim warning about what could happen, it is far from inevitable, Eltahir stresses. The study examined not just the “business as usual” case but also the effects under a moderate &nbsp;mitigation scenario, which showed that these dramatic, deadly effects can still be averted. “There is value in mitigation, as far as public health and reducing heat waves,” he says. “With mitigation, we hope we will be able to avoid these severe projections. This is not something that is unavoidable.”</p>
<p>“This study provides vitally important information for planning for a hot, wet future in South Asia,” says Matthew Huber, a professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at Purdue University, who was not involved in this research&nbsp; “The results are impressive and, frankly, oppressive,” he says. “The study shows that unfettered warming is likely to do substantial harm to the health and well-being of the most populous democracy on Earth. This is very bad news.”</p>
<p>The research was supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore through the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).</p>
A new study shows that without significant reductions in carbon emissions, deadly heat waves could begin within as little as a few decades to strike regions of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This map shows the maximum wet-bulb temperatures (which combine temperature and humidity) that have been reached in this region since 1979.
Courtesy of the researchersResearch, School of Engineering, Civil and environmental engineering, Climate change, Environment, Climate, Poverty, Global Warming, India, Asia, Developing countries, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART)Underground magma pulse triggered end-Permian extinctionhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/underground-magma-pulse-triggered-end-permian-extinction-0731
Study ties specific interval during an extended period of volcanism to Earth’s most severe mass extinction.Mon, 31 Jul 2017 05:00:00 -0400Jennifer Chu | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/underground-magma-pulse-triggered-end-permian-extinction-0731<p>Geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey and MIT have homed in on the precise event that set off the end-Permian extinction, Earth’s most devastating mass extinction, which killed off 90 percent of marine organisms and 75 percent of life on land approximately 252 million years ago.</p>
<p>In a paper published today in <em>Nature Communications</em>, the team reports that about 251.9 million years ago, a huge pulse of magma rose up through the Earth, in a region that today is known as the Siberian Traps. Some of this molten liquid stopped short of erupting onto the surface and instead spread out beneath the Earth’s shallow crust, creating a vast network of rock stretching across almost 1 million square miles.</p>
<p>As the subsurface magma crystallized into geologic formations called sills, it heated the surrounding carbon-rich sediments and rapidly released into the atmosphere a tremendous volume of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases.</p>
<p>“This first pulse of sills generated a huge volume of greenhouse gases, and things got really bad, really fast,” says first author and former MIT graduate student Seth Burgess. “Gases warmed the climate, acidified the ocean, and made it very difficult for things on land and in the ocean to survive. And we think the smoking gun is the first pulse of Siberian Traps sills.”</p>
<p><strong>Getting to extinction’s roots</strong></p>
<p>Since the 1980s, scientists have suspected that the Earth’s most severe extinction events, the end-Permian included, were triggered by large igneous provinces such as the Siberian Traps — expansive accumulations of igneous rock, formed from protracted eruptions of lava over land and intrusions of magma beneath the surface. But Burgess was struck by a certain incongruity in such hypotheses.</p>
<p>“One thing really stuck out as a sore thumb to me: The total duration of magmatism in most cases is about 1 million years, but extinctions happen really quickly, in about 10,000 years. That told me that it’s not the entire large igneous province driving extinction,” says Burgess, who is now a research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey.</p>
<p>He surmised that the root cause of mass extinctions might be a shorter, more specific interval of magmatism within the much longer period over which large igneous provinces form. &nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Digging through the data</strong></p>
<p>Burgess decided to re-examine geochronologic measurements he made as a graduate student in the lab of Samuel Bowring, the Robert R. Shrock Professor of Geology in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.</p>
<p>In 2014 and 2015, he and Bowring used high-precision dating techniques to determine the timing of the end-Permian mass extinction and ages of ancient magmatic rocks that the team collected over three field expeditions to the Siberian Traps.</p>
<p>From the rocks’ ages, they estimated this magmatic period started around 300,000 years before the onset of the end-Permian extinction and petered out 500,000 years after the extinction ended. From these dates, the team concluded that magmatism in the Siberian Traps must have had a role in triggering the mass extinction.</p>
<p>But a puzzle remained. Even while lava erupted in massive volumes hundreds of thousands of years prior to the extinction, there has been no evidence in the global fossil record to suggest any biotic stress or significant change in the climate system during that period.</p>
<p>“You’d expect if these lavas are driving extinction, you’d see global evidence of biosphere decline,” Burgess says.</p>
<p>When he looked back through the group’s data, he noticed that rocks dated within the 300,000-year window prior to the start of the extinction were almost exclusively volcanic, meaning they formed from lava that erupted onto land. In contrast, the subsurface sills only started to appear just before the start of the extinction, 251.9 million years ago.</p>
<p>“I realized the oldest sills out there correspond, bang-on, with the start of the mass extinction,” Burgess says. “You don’t have any negative effects occurring in the biosphere when you’ve got all this lava erupting, but the second you start intruding sills, the mass extinction starts.”</p>
<p><strong>Revised timeline</strong></p>
<p>Based on his new observations of the data, Burgess has outlined a refined, three-stage timeline of the processes that likely triggered the end-Permian extinction. The first stage marks the start of widespread eruptions of lava over land, 252.2 million years ago. As the lava spews out and solidifies over a period of 300,000 years, it builds up a dense, rocky cap.</p>
<p>The second stage starts at around 251.9 million years ago, when the lava cap becomes a structural barrier to subsequent lava eruption. Instead, acending magma stalls and spreads beneath the lava cap as sills, heating up carbon-rich sediments in the Earth and releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere — almost precisely when the mass extinction event began. “These first sills are the key,” Burgess says.</p>
<p>The last stage begins around 251.5 million years ago, as the release of gases slows, even as magma continues to intrude into the sediments.</p>
<p>“At this point, the magma has already degassed the basin of most of its volatiles, and it becomes more difficult to generate large volumes of volatiles from a basin that’s already been cooked,” Burgess explains.</p>
<p><strong>A culprit for other extinctions?</strong></p>
<p>Could similarly short pulses of sills have triggered other mass extinctions in Earth’s history? Burgess looked at the geochronologic data for three other extinction events which scientists have found to coincide with large igneous provinces: the Cretaceous-Plaeogene, the Triassic/Jurassic, and the early Jurassic extinctions.</p>
<p>For both the Triassic/Jurassic, and the early Jurassic extinction events, he found that the associated large igneous provinces contained significant networks of sills, or intrusive magma, emplaced into sedimentary basins that likely hosted volatile gases. In these two cases, the extinction trigger might have been an initial short pulse of intrusive magma, similar to the end-Permian.</p>
<p>However, for the Cretaceous-Paleogene event — the extinction that killed off the dinosaurs — Burgess noted that the large igneous province that was erupting at the time is primarily composed of lavas, not sills, and was erupted into granitic rock, not a gas-rich sedimentary basin. Thus, it likely did not release enough greenhouse gases to exclusively cause the dinosaur die-off. Instead, Burgess says a combination of lava eruptions and the Chicxulub asteroid impact was likely responsible.</p>
<p>“Large igneous provinces have always been blamed for mass extinctions, but no one has really figured out if they’re really guilty, and if so, how it was done,” Burgess says. “Our new work takes that next step and identifies which part of the large igneous province is guilty, and how it committed the crime.”</p>
<p>The paper’s co-authors are Bowring and J.D. Muirhead, of Syracuse University. The research was supported, in part, by a U.S. Geological Survey Mendenhall Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, which was awarded to Burgess.</p>
Geologists report that about 251.9 million years ago, a huge pulse of magma rose up through the Earth, in a region that today is known as the Siberian Traps.
Climate, Climate change, Geology, EAPS, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Emissions, Environment, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Research, School of ScienceUnderstanding tropical rainfallhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/understanding-tropical-rainfall-0728
Study finds ocean circulation, coupled with trade wind changes, efficiently limits shifting of tropical rainfall patterns.Fri, 28 Jul 2017 18:05:01 -0400Lauren Hinkel | Oceans at MIThttps://news.mit.edu/2017/understanding-tropical-rainfall-0728<p>The Intertropical Convergence Zone (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertropical_Convergence_Zone" target="_blank">ITCZ</a>), also known as the doldrums, is one of the dramatic features of Earth’s climate system. Prominent enough to be seen from space, the ITCZ appears in satellite images as a band of bright clouds around the tropics. Here, moist warm air accumulates in this atmospheric region near the equator, where the ocean and atmosphere heavily interact. Intense solar radiation and calm, warm ocean waters produce an area of high humidity, ascending air, and rainfall, which is fed by converging trade winds from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The convected air forms clusters of thunderstorms characteristic of the ITCZ, releasing heat before moving away from the ITCZ — toward the poles — cooling and descending in the subtropics. This circulation completes the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hadley%20cell" target="_blank">Hadley cells</a>&nbsp;of the ITCZ, which play an important role in balancing Earth’s energy budget — transporting energy between the hemispheres and away from the equator.</p>
<p>However, the position of the ITCZ isn’t static. In order to transport this energy, the ITCZ and Hadley cells shift seasonally between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, residing in the one that’s most strongly heated from the sun and radiant heat from the Earth’s surface, which on average yearly is the Northern Hemisphere. Accompanying these shifts can be prolonged periods of violent storms or severe drought, which significantly impacts human populations living in its path.</p>
<p>Scientists are therefore keen to understand the climate controls that drive the north-south movement of the ITCZ over the seasonal cycle, as well as on inter-annual to decadal timescales in Earth’s paleoclimatology up through today. Researchers have traditionally approached this issue from the perspective of the atmosphere’s behavior and understanding rainfall, but anecdotal evidence from models with a dynamic ocean has suggested that the ocean’s sensitivity to climate changes could affect the ITCZ’s response. Now,&nbsp;a <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0818.1" target="_blank">study</a>&nbsp;from MIT graduate student <a href="http://paocweb.mit.edu/people/brianmg" target="_blank">Brian Green</a>&nbsp;and the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography&nbsp;<a href="http://oceans.mit.edu/JohnMarshall/" target="_blank">John Marshall</a>&nbsp;from the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) published in the American Meteorological Society’s&nbsp;<em>Journal of Climate</em>, investigates the role that the ocean plays in modulating the ITCZ’s position and appreciates its sensitivity when the Northern Hemisphere is heated. In so doing, the work gives climate scientists a better understanding of what causes changes to tropical rainfall.</p>
<p>“In the past decade or so there’s been a lot of research studying controls on the north-south position of the ITCZ, particularly from this energy balance perspective. ... And this has normally been done in the context of ignoring the adjustment of the ocean circulation — the ocean circulation is either forcing these [ITCZ] shifts or passively responding to changes in the atmosphere above,” Green says. “But we know, particularly in the tropics, that the ocean circulation is very tightly coupled through the trade winds to atmospheric circulation and the ITCZ position, so what we wanted to do was investigate how that ocean circulation might feedback on the energy balance that controls that ITCZ position, and how strong that feedback might be.”</p>
<p>To examine this, Green and Marshall performed experiments in a global climate model with a coupled atmosphere and ocean, and observed how the ocean circulation’s cross-equatorial energy transport and its associated surface energy fluxes affected the ITCZ’s response when they imposed an inter-hemispheric heating contrast. Using a simplified model that omitted landmasses, clouds, and monsoon dynamics, while keeping a fully circulating atmosphere that interacts with radiation highlighted the ocean’s effect while minimized other confounding variables that could mask the results. The addition of north-south ocean ridges, creating a large and small basin, mimicked the behavior of the Earth’s <a href="http://oceans.mit.edu/news/featured-stories/mitnasa-evaluates-efficiency-of-oceans-as-heat-sink-atmospheric-gases-sponge" target="_blank">Atlantic’s meridional overturning circulation</a> and the Pacific Ocean.</p>
<p>Green and Marshall then ran the asymmetrically heated planet simulations in two ocean configurations and compared the ITCZ responses. The first used a stationary “slab ocean,” where the thermal properties were specified so that it mimicked the fully coupled model before perturbation, but was unable to respond to the heating. The second incorporated a dynamic ocean circulation. By forcing the models identically, they could quantify the ocean circulation’s impact on the ITCZ.</p>
<p>“We found in the case where there’s a fully coupled, dynamic ocean, the northward shift of the ITCZ was damped by a factor of four compared to the passive ocean. So that’s hinting that the ocean is one of the leading controls on the position of the ITCZ,” Green says. “It’s a significant damping of the response of the atmosphere, and the reason behind this can just be diagnosed from that energy balance.”</p>
<p>In the dynamic ocean model, they found that when they heat the simulated ocean-covered planet, eddies export some heat into the tropical atmosphere from the extra-tropics, which causes the Hadley cells to respond — the Northern Hemisphere cell to weaken and the Southern Hemisphere cell to strengthen. This transports heat southward through the atmosphere. Concurrently, the ITCZ shifts northward; associated with this are changes in the trade winds — the surface branch of the Hadley cells — and the surface wind stress near the equator. The surface ocean feels this change in winds, which energizes an anomalous ocean circulation and moves water mass southwards across the equator in both hemispheres, carrying heat with it. Once this surface water reaches the extra-tropics, the ocean pumps it downwards where it returns northward across the equator, cooler and at depth. This temperature contrast between the warm surface cross-equatorial flow and the cooler deeper return flow sets the heat transported by the ocean circulation.</p>
<p>“In the slab ocean case, only the atmosphere can move heat across the equator; whereas in our fully coupled case, we see that the ocean is the most strongly compensating component of the system, transporting the majority of the forcing across the equator.” Green says. “So from the atmosphere’s perspective, it doesn’t even feel the full effect of that heating that we’re imposing. And as a result, it has to transport less heat across the equator and shift the ITCZ less.” Green adds that the response of the large basin ocean circulation broadly mimics the Indian Ocean’s yearly average circulation.</p>
<p>Marshall notes that the ability of the wind-driven ocean circulation to damp ITCZ shifts represents a previously unappreciated constraint on the atmosphere’s energy budget: “We showed that the ITCZ cannot move very far away from the equator, even in very ‘extreme’ climates,” indicating that the position of the ITCZ may be much less sensitive to inter-hemispheric heating contrasts than previously thought.”</p>
<p>Green and Marshall are currently expanding upon this work. With the help of&nbsp;<a href="http://web.mit.edu/davidmcg/www/" target="_blank">David McGee</a>, the Kerr-Mcgee Career Development Assistant Professor in EAPS, and postdoc&nbsp;<a href="http://paocweb.mit.edu/people/chamarro" target="_blank">Eduardo Moreno-Chamarro</a>, the pair are applying this to the paleoclimate record during&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_event" target="_blank">Heimrich events</a>, when the Earth experiences strong cooling, looking for ITCZ shifts.</p>
<p>They’re also investigating the decomposition of heat and mass transport between the atmosphere and the ocean, as well as between the Earth’s oceans. “The physics that control each of those oceans’ responses are dramatically different, certainly between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans,” Green says. “Right now, we’re working to understand how the mass transports of the atmosphere and ocean are coupled. While we know that they’re constrained to overturn in the same sense, they’re not actually constrained to transport an identical amount of mass, so you could further enhance or weaken the damping by the ocean circulation by affecting how strongly the mass transports are coupled.”</p>
This image is a combination of cloud data from NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-11) and color land cover classification data. The Intertropical Convergence Zone is the band of bright white clouds that cuts across the center of the Earth. Image: NOAA GOES Project Science Office and NASAOceanography and ocean engineering, EAPS, School of Science, Research, Weather, Climate, Earth and atmospheric sciencesMIT Haystack Observatory&#039;s John Foster named AGU Fellowhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-haystack-observatory-john-foster-named-agu-fellow-0728
Distinguished atmospheric scientist recognized for lifetime of accomplishments.Fri, 28 Jul 2017 17:35:01 -0400Haystack Observatoryhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-haystack-observatory-john-foster-named-agu-fellow-0728<p>John C. Foster, principal research scientist at MIT's Haystack Observatory, has been awarded AGU Fellow status from the American Geophysical Union for 2017. The AGU elects a small group of members to become fellows each year in honor of their scientific leadership and research excellence. Recipients are AGU members who have fundamentally advanced research in their fields of geophysics.</p>
<p>"AGU Fellows are recognized for their scientific eminence in the Earth and space sciences. Their breadth of interests and the scope of their contributions are remarkable and often groundbreaking," the <a href="https://eos.org/agu-news/2017-class-of-agu-fellows-announced" target="_blank">announcement</a> read. "They have expanded our understanding of the Earth and space sciences, from volcanic processes, solar cycles, and deep-sea microbiology to the variability of our climate and so much more. Only 0.1 percent of AGU membership receives this recognition in any given year."</p>
<p>A group of space science colleagues nominated Foster for this award, citing his visionary leadership in space physics research, including transformative insights and work in magnetosphere-plasmasphere-ionosphere coupling, ionospheric storm response, and radiation belt dynamics. A large portion of Foster’s research has been done with ground and space-based observational techniques, including incoherent scatter radar and satellite-borne instruments, using these powerful tools for investigations of the physics of the upper atmosphere and Earth's highly energetic radiation belts. He is an expert in the analysis of data from ionospheric radars at Haystack's Millstone Hill and other facilities. Foster also has been extensively involved in international scientific collaboration with colleagues in China, Ukraine, and Russia.</p>
<p>"John’s excellence and sharp observational eye continues to lead the field in applications of multiple observational points of view from both ground and space remote sensors, creating new insights on the workings of the complicated Sun-Earth system and its dynamics," says Phil Erickson, assistant director at Haystack Observatory. "He is truly outstanding at seeing connections in phenomena that have previously been studied only in isolation."</p>
<p>Broad interests in space science continue today to lead Foster towards innovative and far reaching insights within the vitally important study of cross-scale and cross-disciplinary coupling processes in Earth’s near-space environment. He is an innovator in the application of high-power ionospheric radar systems to the study of plasmas and instabilities in the terrestrial mid-latitude ionosphere.</p>
<p>Foster’s work has taken place across multiple institutions in a career that has lasted more than four decades. After receiving his PhD in physics from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1973, he worked at a number of institutions, including the National Research Council of Canada and Utah State University. In 1983, former Haystack director John Evans recruited Foster to lead its internationally known atmospheric science program. He led this group for more than 30 years, maintaining and significantly growing the scientific and technical staff throughout this time period. He was appointed assistant director of Haystack in 1983 and promoted to principal research scientist in 1988, achieving associate Haystack director status in 1995. Throughout his career, Foster has dedicated much time and effort to mentoring a large number of younger space scientists.</p>
<p>Even beyond this large body of prior work, Foster continues his extensive publication record and a brisk collaboratory pace of fundamental and unique discoveries in space science. His most recent work using data from the twin <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/van-allen-probes" target="_blank">NASA Van Allen Probes spacecraft</a> was <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016JA023429/full" target="_blank">published earlier this year</a> in the AGU's <em>Journal of Geophysical Research Space Physics</em>. The study provides an example of Foster’s innovative observational approach, as he and several colleagues analyzed the nonlinear interactions of ultrarelativistic electrons and very low frequency waves to advance understanding of rapid variations in Earth's outer radiation belt.</p>
John Foster is a senior research scientist at the Haystack Observatory.Photo: Nancy Wolfe KotaryAwards, honors and fellowships, Staff, Haystack Observatory, Physics, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Space, astronomy and planetary scienceDefiance: Disobedience for the good of allhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/defiance-disobedience-for-the-good-of-all-mit-media-lab-0725
MIT Media Lab summer event explores responsible dissent, embodied in its new Disobedience Award.Tue, 25 Jul 2017 15:20:01 -0400MIT Media Labhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/defiance-disobedience-for-the-good-of-all-mit-media-lab-0725<p>The mood was electric at the MIT Media Lab on July 21 when more than 500 people gathered for its annual summer event, this year called <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/events/defiance/" target="_blank">Defiance</a>. Attendees were buzzing with news that had broken on the eve of the symposium: The Media Lab had not only chosen the winners of its new <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/posts/disobedience-award/">Disobedience Award</a>, it had also selected several honorable mentions because the pool of more than 7,800 nominations was so rich with achievements that deserved recognition.</p>
<p>“We wanted to honor the people who found ways to say, ‘The systems aren’t working for us — we really need to step outside them and do something radically different,’” said Ethan Zuckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media and a member of the award selection committee. Zuckerman said that the panel also wanted to recognize those working for good within institutions. “They’re taking brave steps and actions to make sure those institutions live up to their values and to their higher purpose, not just to the rules behind them.”</p>
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<p>In selecting the honorees, Zuckerman, Media Lab Director Joi Ito, and 10 other committee members focused on work that impacts society in positive ways, and is consistent with a set of key principles, including nonviolence, creativity, courage, and responsibility for one’s actions. Nominees had to be a living person or group engaged in “extraordinary disobedience for the benefit of society.”</p>
<p>The creation of the award was announced at <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/events/forbidden-research/">Forbidden Research</a>, the lab’s 2016 summer event. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, provided the funds after he and Ito came up with the idea last year. “The prize shines a light on the voices we should be listening to,” Hoffman said at Defiance. “On what examples we should be setting for ourselves and for our future selves. Some of the most important human progress comes when you are essentially speaking truth to power.”</p>
<p><strong>Disobedience Award winners</strong></p>
<p>The committee decided that’s exactly what Michigan pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha and Virginia Tech professor of engineering Marc Edwards did in investigating lead-tainted water in Flint, Michigan, and exposing official misconduct in the crisis. Both Hanna-Attisha and Edwards decided to donate their shares of the $250,000 prize to the people of Flint.</p>
<p>“It’s those kids who need these resources,” said Hanna-Attisha. “My activism today is to make sure that we don’t sit back and ignore the consequences of lead exposure. We know what it does to children. My commitment is to turn this around.” Edwards called himself a “serial troublemaker,” having exposed scientific misconduct by federal agencies connected to lead-contaminated water in Washington in 2004. “We were destined to see it repeated, and we knew something like Flint was going to happen. Ultimately, I got a call from a Flint mom who saw all the signs and then we started working with Flint residents so that they could save their own day.” Edwards and Hanna-Attisha persevered in the face of harassment and academic sanctions. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Honorable mentions</strong></p>
<p>James Hansen said his work also got him “in a lot of trouble.” He was one of three award finalists who received a $10,000 honorable mention. Hansen, widely recognized as a pioneer of climate change research, said he’s had “some differences with the scientific community, and I still do. There are many issues where we need to stand up and tell what we think is the truth even if the powers that be don’t like it.”</p>
<p>The co-founders of Freedom University Georgia, which offers free classes and college prep to undocumented students and were also recognized as finalists, faced pressure as well. “Freedom U initially emerged in 2011 as an act of defiance against our employer [the state’s higher education board],” said Lorgia García-Peña. She and three other professors also at the University of Georgia at that time — Betina Kaplan, Bethany Moreton, and Pamela Voekel — established the school in collaboration with a coalition of undocumented students and immigrants’ rights activists. Now one-fifth of Freedom University students win full merit scholarships to traditional colleges.</p>
<p>When he introduced the third finalist to be honored — the Water Protectors of Standing Rock, who launched the massive protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline — Ito pointed out that many successful movements don’t have clear leadership. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said she doesn’t see herself as a leader. “Everything just happened because we stood in prayer and nonviolent resistance.” Allard mesmerized the audience as she related how the Standing Rock protest gained momentum. “It was all the people who came together. It was all the people who understood that water was important. It was all the people of the world who know that we have to change now. And we cannot back down.”</p>
<p>“We have been defiant for 500 years,” said Phyllis Young, a fellow protector of Standing Rock and longtime Lakota activist who shared the honorable mention with Allard, Jasilyn Charger, and Joseph White Eyes. Like Allard, Young also captivated the crowd as she chronicled the history of resistance by her ancestors. “We are the people on the edge,” she said, adding that she’d like to collaborate with MIT.</p>
<p>Young’s wish resonated with Megan Smith ’86, SM ’88, former White House CTO and a member of the Media Lab advisory council. Smith was so moved by the stories of Standing Rock that, together with MIT’s Vice President for Research Maria Zuber, she suggested a Dakota-MIT summit on green energy. That announcement drew loud applause, especially when Young said “Yes, we could coordinate with the brass ring.”</p>
<p><strong>A nod to the past</strong></p>
<p>“Defiance is a celebration of the highest instance in human nature,” said the event’s emcee, Farai Chidaya. The veteran journalist and analyst, who recently joined the Media Lab as a Director’s Fellow, said that defiant work allows us “to transcend unjust rules and restrictions, and to surface the love of humanity in ways that are brave and risky.”</p>
<p>Another new Director’s Fellow, Jamila Raqib, picked up on that theme. She’s executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution and a Nobel Prize nominee in the peace category. The Einstein Institution is based on the legendary physicist’s belief, said Raqib, “that strategically applied nonviolent defiance offers humanity the best hope for bringing about a world with more peace and justice.” &nbsp;</p>
<p>Past achievements laid the groundwork for the Disobedience Award winners and finalists, stressed another speaker, Gregg Pascal Zachary, author and Arizona State University professor. “Your legitimacy as rebels and dissenters today in part depends upon the legitimacy gained by dissenters and rebels. History can show you patterns, how they play out, so you can anticipate what you might face in your struggle.” Fellow presenter Julia Reda agreed. She represents the European Pirate Party, a movement to defend freedoms online, and said that progress will only happen “if somebody has planted the seed for change of thinking in society. This is what defiant people actually do.” Reda went on to talk about her unconventional path to politics, as an outsider now making the most of having “a seat at the table.” &nbsp;</p>
<p>Echoing that sentiment was Ed You, a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s Biological Countermeasures Unit. He thinks the agency would benefit from bringing biohackers to the table as well. “What a fantastic act of defiance that would be. Members of the hacker community can come up with solutions for the FBI, and it’s important for everyone to push their comfort level.” Adam Foss, a former prosecutor who is working to reform the criminal justice system, also talked about bringing more people — and greater diversity — to the table. Foss told the audience that “the seats in this room that are not filled could be representative of black and brown bodies that could be here sharing their ideas. The lack of those ideas is impacting all of us.”</p>
<p>Engagement with other people is critical, said journalist and author Masha Gessen. “It is really important to talk with people who affirm your reality. But if that’s all you’re getting, then you’re not actually engaging with reality. I think we have to accept a level of discomfort for ourselves, too.”</p>
<p><strong>Giving voice to underrepresented people</strong></p>
<p>Esra’a Al Shafei, another Defiance speaker, is a Bahraini activist and founder of <a href="http://Majal.org" target="_blank">Majal.org</a>, a network of online platforms that amplify marginalized voices. “Defiance goes beyond dissent,” she said. “It’s creating avenues for self-expression. If you keep lowering the barriers through music, for instance, it makes censorship much harder, and encourages young people to develop their own identity and feel more in charge of their own voices.” Speaking of music, Al Shafei somehow found a way to weave singers Céline Dion and Meatloaf into her presentation, cracking up the audience throughout her time on the stage. Jose Antonio Vargas also had them laughing. “Humor is so important,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, filmmaker, and media entrepreneur said. “If I didn’t laugh about my own circumstances, I don’t know where I’d be.” He shared the stories of his life as an undocumented immigrant in the U.S., his home for almost 24 years. “The reality now though is when you have privilege like I did, like I do, is … what are you doing to risk it? What does it mean to stand up for your undocumented neighbors, classmates, and co-workers?”</p>
<p>While Vargas focused on issues of today, the next session again drew from examples of defiance in history, and also considered the tensions between science and faith. In a discussion between Dominican priest Eric Salobir and Maria Zuber, moderated by Berkman Klein Center co-founder and Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Zuber said that “we should always be looking at what the data is telling us. If it tells us we should change our idea, then we should change our idea. In the process of change, one thing to learn is having a good enough dialogue and trying to get enough explanations that you can get buy-in to allow change to proceed.”</p>
<p><strong>The audacity of disobedience</strong></p>
<p>Lab director Joi Ito gave a special shout-out to Zuber. She took a risk, he said, in being part of the Disobedience Award selection committee, because she has a position on the National Science Board, which is an advisory body to the U.S. President and Congress. But Ito said that the committee was “very careful to not allow fear or lack of courage to enter the selection process. We were checking each other to make sure there was no kowtowing.” In the end, he said, they were all pleased with their choices.</p>
<p>Reid Hoffman agreed, and announced that he would continue to fund the Disobedience Award. “These are the things that matter. These are the issues that we should surface. This is the light we should point this beacon at. This was a well-validated ‘seed experiment’ that was totally awesome.”</p>
Left to right: LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Media Lab Director Joi Ito joined Disobedience Award finalists Phyllis Young and LaDonna Brave Bull Allard; Betina Kaplan and Lorgia García-Peña; and James Hansen; along with winners Marc Edwards and Mona Hanna-Attisha.Photo: David Silverman PhotographyAwards, honors and fellowships, Special events and guest speakers, Media Lab, Technology and society, Social justice, Ethics, Climate change, Center for Civic Media, SHASS, School of Architecture and Planning, Comparative Media Studies/WritingLaying the foundation for new energy technologyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-chemistry-professor-todd-van-voorhis-laying-foundation-of-new-energy-technologies-0724
Theoretical chemist Troy Van Voorhis probes big energy-related questions, scrutinizing electrons and chemical bonds to improve sustainable energy solutions.Mon, 24 Jul 2017 11:40:01 -0400Leda Zimmerman | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-chemistry-professor-todd-van-voorhis-laying-foundation-of-new-energy-technologies-0724<p>Troy Van Voorhis remembers&nbsp;being jolted by the announcement in&nbsp;1989, when he was in the seventh grade, that researchers had successfully demonstrated cold fusion.</p>
<p>“My science teacher canceled our regular class to explain this remarkable development,” recalls Van Voorhis, the Haslam and Dewey Professor of Chemistry at MIT. “The idea really captured my imagination, and I was hooked on the possibility that you could produce energy from the physical reactions of chemicals.”</p>
<p>Although the&nbsp;apparent breakthrough quickly proved to be spurious science, it ignited Van Voorhis’&nbsp;lifelong interest in energy and chemistry. Nearly three decades later, the theoretical chemist&nbsp;investigates what he calls “energy-related big questions.” He scrutinizes and models the behavior of electrons in research that, among other things, seeks to improve the photovoltaic cells used in solar energy; to develop new, high-efficiency indoor lighting; and to create chemical storage technology for electricity generated by renewable energy technologies.</p>
<p>While his fuse for scientific discovery was lit early on, it took time for Van Voorhis to find his niche exploring the intricate dynamics of molecules involved in processes that produce, transfer, and store chemical energy.</p>
<p>Raised in the Northside section of Indianapolis by a father who taught junior high school mathematics and a mother who was a professor of social work, Van Voorhis was, in his own words, a “shy, introverted child.” In high school, he found theater a constructive way to break out of his shell.&nbsp;“Interacting with an audience was easier than interacting with individuals,” he says.</p>
<p>Van Voorhis also spent a lot of time “playing with mathematics problems because it was something you could do on your own.” But he worried about pursuing the subject as a college major because, he says, “it seemed too abstract.” Instead, he decided to pair math with chemistry, another area he excelled in during high school.</p>
<p>In college, as he describes it, Van Voorhis pursued “curiosity-based science,” first at Rice University, where he earned his BA as a double major in 1997, and then at the University of California at Berkeley, where he conducted his graduate studies in chemistry.&nbsp;One area that captured his imagination involved finding better ways to describe mathematically how chemical bonds rupture. “It was a question I thought sounded interesting, a difficult problem,” he says.&nbsp;“But it was not something that proved to be useful to other people.”</p>
<p><strong>Pairing up</strong></p>
<p>It was not until Van Voorhis landed at MIT, he says, that he understood that his technical tools “might actually solve really important problems.” He credits a formative encounter in his early days as an assistant professor with bringing about this revelation.</p>
<p>“I sat down to lunch with the late, great theoretical chemist [and former dean of the School of Science] Robert Silbey and told him I was stuck on a direction to take as I started out,” Van Voorhis recalls. “He told me to talk to experimentalists at MIT, who were working on the most exciting problems, ask them how I could help them, and then hitch myself to their wagons.”</p>
<p>Wasting no time, Van Voorhis found an eager experimentalist partner in&nbsp;Marc Baldo, who is now a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Baldo, who had also recently arrived at MIT, was looking into&nbsp;the application&nbsp;and potential benefits of organic chemicals in light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells. “I told him my lab worked on simulations involving electrons and chemical bonds and maybe we could help him,” says Van Voorhis. “It was the start of a beautiful friendship.”</p>
<p>It also launched a fruitful research collaboration. In their very first project together, Van Voorhis provided the computational firepower to help Baldo demonstrate that subtle manipulations of energy states in organic LEDs could improve efficiency in light output. The technical skills that Van Voorhis brought to MIT had found a novel and practical outlet.</p>
<p>Starting in 2005, Van Voorhis and Baldo began focusing on ways to push past longstanding limits in a range of energy technologies, starting with solar power from photovoltaic (PV) cells.</p>
<p>Since the first silicon solar PV panels were invented in the 1960s, they have managed to achieve at best 25 percent efficiency as they absorb photons from the sun and convert that energy into&nbsp;electrical current.</p>
<p>Van Voorhis and Baldo demonstrated that it was possible to overcome this limit. Normally, a single photon yields one electron plus waste heat. But by lining solar cells with organic molecules, they figured out how to take a photon and produce two electrons, generating twice as much electricity and less waste heat.</p>
<p>“Marc and I theoretically proved it might be possible to use fission in a device to make a solar cell more than 100 percent&nbsp;efficient,” says Van Voorhis.</p>
<p><strong>Catalyzing brighter solutions</strong></p>
<p>In other domains of research, Van Voorhis and Baldo are testing organic dyes that could help make organic LEDs brighter and perhaps as long-lasting as current conventional LEDs — up to 100,000 hours.</p>
<p>They are also actively investigating chemical-based energy storage in the hopes of helping to bring renewable energy sources such as solar to scale. “The energy content of a normal gas-powered car battery, which weighs 25 pounds, is the same as a quarter-pound Big Mac,” Van Voorhis says. “There’s a huge incentive to convert electricity into chemical fuels that are energy-dense, but we need to find the right abundant and cheap catalyst for making chemical conversions possible.”</p>
<p>One catalyst candidate, a super-thin sheet of graphitic carbon, doped with elements such as nitrogen, boron, or sulfur, presents intriguing possibilities as the basis for a new type of fuel cell. Van Voorhis is now running high-throughput computational simulations to figure out the best kind of molecules to pair with graphite for the optimal electrochemical conversion cocktail.</p>
<p>For these research endeavors, Van Voorhis draws inspiration not only from faculty colleagues but also from students. In his primary teaching assignment, the introductory class 5.111 (Principles of Chemical Science), Van Voorhis says he incorporates “bits from my research on photovoltaics and alternative fuels, helping students make connections and see the relevance of these ideas.”</p>
<p>“My greatest pleasure in teaching is seeing the lightbulb go on for students — that instant where a topic goes from a complete mystery to something that is just starting to make sense,” he says.</p>
<p>Van Voorhis views mentoring graduate students as a lifelong relationship.</p>
<p>“My job as an advisor is to help them become independent scientists, and I find that exposing them to problems of long-range societal relevance like energy or the environment is crucial to them developing into responsible, mature researchers who will be able to devote their skills to problems of significance,” he says.</p>
<p>He says he is also heartened to see so many among his MIT students who are “socially conscious and motivated to work on energy questions,” including in his own&nbsp;laboratory. He finds this engagement reassuring, given that many of the challenges he works on in energy technology may take years to solve.</p>
<p>“With problems this big, I have to be comfortable being a cog in a very large machine, where I do the part I’m good at and rely on someone else to do their part, and together we solve the problem.”</p>
<p><em>This article appears in the <a href="http://energy.mit.edu/energy-futures/spring-2017/">Spring 2017</a> issue of&nbsp;</em>Energy Futures,<em>&nbsp;the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative.</em></p>
Troy Van Voorhis is the Haslam and Dewey Professor of Chemistry. Photo: Justin KnightSchool of Science, Alternative energy, Chemistry, Climate change, Energy, Energy storage, Faculty, Mathematics, MIT Energy Initiative, Research, SolarStudy: Indian monsoons have strengthened over past 15 yearshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/indian-monsoons-strengthened-past-15-years-0724
A 50-year dry spell has reversed, with more rain to come. Mon, 24 Jul 2017 11:00:00 -0400Jennifer Chu | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/indian-monsoons-strengthened-past-15-years-0724<p>An MIT study published today in <em>Nature Climate Change </em>finds that the Indian summer monsoons, which bring rainfall to the country each year between June and September, have strengthened in the last 15 years over north central India.</p>
<p>This heightened monsoon activity has reversed a 50-year drying period during which the monsoon season brought relatively little rain to northern and central India. Since 2002, the researchers have found, this drying trend has given way to a much wetter pattern, with stronger monsoons supplying much-needed rain, along with powerful, damaging floods, to the populous north central region of India.</p>
<p>A shift in India’s land and sea temperatures may partially explain this increase in monsoon rainfall. The researchers note that starting in 2002, nearly the entire Indian subcontinent has experienced very strong warming, reaching between 0.1 and 1 degree Celsius per year. Meanwhile, a rise in temperatures over the Indian Ocean has slowed significantly.</p>
<p>Chien Wang, a senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, the Center for Global Change Science, and the Joint Program for the Science and Policy of Global Change, says this sharp gradient in temperatures — high over land, and low over surrounding waters — is a perfect recipe for whipping up stronger monsoons.</p>
<p>“Climatologically, India went through a sudden, drastic warming, while the Indian Ocean, which used to be warm, all of a sudden slowed its warming,” Wang says. “This may have been from a combination of natural variability and anthropogenic influences, and we’re still trying to get to the bottom of the physical processes that caused this reversal.”</p>
<p>Wang’s co-author is Qinjian Jin, a postdoc in the Joint Program for the Science and Policy of Global Change.</p>
<p><strong>A theory drying up</strong></p>
<p>The Indian monsoon phenomenon is the longest recorded monsoon system in meteorology. Measurements of its rainfall date back to the late 18th century, when British colonists established the country’s first weather observatories to record the seasonal phenomenon. Since then, the Indian government has set up several thousand rain gauges across the country to record precipitation levels during the monsoon season, which can bring little or no rain to some areas while deluging other parts of the country.</p>
<p>From these yearly measurements, scientists had observed that, since the 1950s, the Indian monsoons were bringing less rain to north central India — a drying period that didn’t seem to let up, compared to a similar monsoon system over Africa and East Asia, which appeared to reverse its drying trend in the 1980s. &nbsp;</p>
<p>“There’s this idea in people’s minds that India is going to dry up,” Wang says. “The Indian monsoon season is undergoing a longer drying than all other systems, and this created a hypothesis that, since India is heavily polluted by manmade aerosols and is also heavily deforested, these may be factors that cause this drying. Modeling studies also projected that this drying would continue to this century.”</p>
<p><strong>A persistent revival</strong></p>
<p>However, Wang and Jin found that India has already begun to reverse its dry spell. The team tracked India’s average daily monsoon rainfall from 1950 to the present day, using six global precipitation datasets, each of which aggregate measurements from the thousands of rain gauges in India, as well as measurements of rainfall and temperature from satellites monitoring land and sea surfaces. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Between 1950 and 2002, they found that north central India experienced a decrease in daily rainfall average, of 0.18 millimeters per decade, during the monsoon season. To their surprise, they discovered that since 2002, precipitation in the region has revived, increasing daily rainfall average by 1.34 millimeters per decade.</p>
<p>“The Indian monsoon is considered a textbook, clearly defined phenomenon, and we think we know a lot about it, but we don’t,” Wang says. “Here, we identify a phenomenon that was mostly overlooked.”</p>
<p>The researchers did note a brief drying period during the 2015 monsoon season that caused widespread droughts throughout the subcontinent. They attribute this blip in the trend to a severe El Niño season, where ocean temperatures temporarily rise, causing a shift in atmospheric circulation, leading to decreased rainfall in India and elsewhere.</p>
<p>“But even counting that dry year, the long-term [wetting] trend is still pretty steady,” Wang says.</p>
<p><strong>More questions ahead</strong></p>
<p>The team believes the current strong monsoon trend is a result of higher land temperatures in combination with lower ocean temperatures. While it’s unclear what is causing India to heat up while its oceans cool down, the researchers have some guesses.</p>
<p>For example, Wang says ocean cooling could be a result of the natural ebb and flow of long-term sea temperatures. India’s land warming on the other hand, could trace back to reduced cloud cover, particularly at low altitudes. Normally, clouds act to reflect incoming sunlight. But Wang and others have observed that in recent years, India has experienced a reduction in low clouds, perhaps in response to an increase in anthropogenic aerosols such as black carbon or soot, which can simultaneously absorb and heat the surrounding air, and prevent clouds from forming.</p>
<p>“But these aerosols have been around even during the drying period, so there must be something else at work,” Wang says. “This raises a lot more questions than answers, and that’s why we’re so excited to figure this out.”</p>
<p>This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation, the National Research Foundation of Singapore, and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) center.</p>
“The Indian monsoon is considered a textbook, clearly defined phenomenon, and we think we know a lot about it, but we don’t,” says Senior Research Scientist Chien Wang. An image from Varanasi, India, shows flooding in 2011.
Climate, EAPS, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Emissions, Environment, India, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Pollution, Research, School of Science, Weather, Climate change, National Science Foundation (NSF)Lessons from pre-industrial climate controlhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/student-profile-alpha-arsano-0724
Graduate student Alpha Yacob Arsano wants to bring natural ventilation to the forefront of modern architecture.Mon, 24 Jul 2017 00:00:00 -0400Dara Farhadi | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/student-profile-alpha-arsano-0724<p>Alpha Yacob Arsano is standing next to the MIT Chapel’s marble altar, admiring the view through the domed skylight above. Outside, water surrounds the cylindrical red-brick structure like a shallow moat. Inside the chapel, the brick walls ripple like waves. Tiny windows line the walls and face downward so guests can see slivers of the moat. When sunlight reflects off the water at a certain angle, it shines into the chapel and dances onto the walls.</p>
<p>Arsano, who just earned a master’s in architecture studies and will continue in the fall in MIT’s PhD program in building technology, admires the different qualities of many buildings on campus. But none compare, in her mind, to the MIT Chapel. She says she is captivated by the structure’s simplistic beauty and its ability to seamlessly interact with components of the outside world in a spiritual, sustainable, and striking way.</p>
<p>Bringing environmental elements — specifically, natural ventilation — into a built structure is also a key focus of Arsano’s own work. For the past two years, she has been developing a digital design tool for early-stage building projects that can inform architects and engineers about how well a natural ventilation system could work to provide fresh air and cooling to the building they’re planning.</p>
<p><strong>Dispensing with air-conditioners</strong></p>
<p>When a user inputs a building’s location, yearly climate and weather patterns, and some initial parameters such as the building type (residential, commercial, etc.) and materials, Arsano’s program, named “Clima +,” can predict how well the building should function with natural ventilation. For example, using Clima +, planners might find that an apartment complex in Phoenix, Arizona, could sustain its cooling needs for 50 percent of the year with natural ventilation.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Although other tools claim to provide the same predictive information, Arsano and her advisor, Christoph Reinhart, an associate professor of architecture, were skeptical about these claims.</p>
<p>“I found that they were not telling the full story of the predictability of natural ventilation potential,” Arsano says. “There were some missing links. For example, people, machines, computers, and lighting might influence indoor temperatures to be higher than outdoor temperatures.”</p>
<p>Arsano believes Clima + addresses these details and provides a clearer prediction for a building’s maximum natural ventilation potential. She says this method should be useful for architects since it would provide guiding information as the building’s design progresses. Overall, she hopes that Clima + contributes to the rise of sustainable buildings that take advantage of the fresh air around them rather than relying solely on heating and air-conditioning systems. Arsano says sound research has also demonstrated the long-term cost efficiency of implementing sustainable and natural ventilation techniques.</p>
<p>“We are overusing natural resources. Why not be efficient with the climate?” she says. “It is a misconception that building energy-efficient structures is more expensive. In the long-term it is much cheaper.”</p>
<p>Arsano’s focus will remain on natural ventilation as she transitions into her PhD. However, she is thinking about investigating related topics, such as the implications of climate change. Prior to the advancement of mechanical technology in the 1900s, Arsano says natural ventilation was at the core of architecture. She hopes to bring this approach back to the forefront of the practice today.</p>
<p>Before starting her master’s program at MIT, Arsano was a one of seven students from around the world accepted to join the Transsolar Academy in Stuttgart, Germany. Transsolar is a leading climate engineering firm that specializes in green building consultation. For a year, she learned the fundamental concepts of building physics and used digital design tools to develop environmentally responsive design ideas for a wine factory in Italy and a commercial urban corridor in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.</p>
<p>Arsano says her time in Germany exposed her to the more empirical, scientific side of architecture and its focus on research methodology.</p>
<p>“I really liked how we were working there. I wanted to take it further so I started to look for programs which had similar paths,” she says. “[MIT] was really fascinating because students aren’t just taking courses; they also become part of a research group. I was looking for that.”</p>
<p><strong>Gender parity</strong></p>
<p>Arsano grew up in Addis Ababa. Her childhood was filled with outdoor activities that gave her the opportunity to engage in the city life. She says these experiences helped form her interest in the physical and cultural facets of the city, which she explored during her undergraduate studies in architecture. She also remembers making visits to see family in the more rural parts of Ethiopia, where she was struck by the differences in lifestyle compared to her home city.</p>
<p>“The difference between developed and developing countries is urbanization. You might not find electrical lights in some places or even [piped] water,” she says. “The vernacular houses [built with traditional methods and local materials] are how people live together. Even for me, it was a cultural difference.”</p>
<p>Arsano says living in Germany for a year was a delightful new experience. Participating in a program where half of the fellows were women was also unusual. When she started school at the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture in Addis Ababa, women made up one-fourth of the class of architecture students, she estimates. When visiting construction sites, she noticed that most of the workers and civil engineers on site were men. She believes the gender balance is starting to shift, but she still considers equal opportunity for women to be a critical issue in architecture.</p>
<p>While at MIT, Arsano has volunteered for the Association of Ethiopian Women in Boston and spoken at community events about questioning cultural norms by using lessons from the scientific method.</p>
<p>“If I want to go into construction, by default I might think it’s not for women, but I have to question that. What’s the limitation? Why can’t I be a construction worker? Why can’t I establish a construction company? What are my challenges? I can try this. I can do this. Maybe step by step. The purpose of questioning and investigating will help us get free from those limitations or those limitations that we think are there,” Arsano says.</p>
<p>Arsano’s outreach work in Boston’s Ethiopian community has extended to children’s education as well. At the invitation of a fellow Ethiopian engineer, Sintayehu Dehnie, Arsano and several other MIT students have been participating in a program for children ranging from 4th grade to high school.</p>
<p>“I engage with the community when I get the chance,” says Arsano. “Children ask you the weirdest questions ever. They ask questions you cannot answer. I really like mapping children’s minds.”</p>
<p><strong>Contemplating the chapel</strong></p>
<p>The MIT Chapel is empty except for two other people. One man walks up to a section of the brick-wall where the bricks have been laid so that it appears the wall has Rubik’s cube-sized holes between each brick.</p>
<p>The man, a visiting architect from another country, asks Arsano if she knows whether these holes serve a practical purpose. She isn’t sure. Without knowing Arsano or her work, the man postulates that they might allow fresh air from outside to come through. “Could be,” Arsano replies.</p>
<p>She walks outside to check the other side of the wall for evidence that the pores go all the way through. It appears that they don’t — perhaps a missed opportunity for the MIT Chapel to reap the benefits of natural ventilation.</p>
“We are overusing natural resources. Why not be efficient with the climate?” Alpha Yacob Arsano says. “It is a misconception that building energy-efficient structures is more expensive. In the long-term it is much cheaper.”
Image: Jake BelcherResearch, Profile, Graduate, postdoctoral, Architecture, School of Architecture and Planning, Students, Campus buildings and architecture, Cities, Climate change, Sustainability, Women, Women in STEM, Ethiopia, AfricaNew fund makes MIT a living sustainability lab https://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-new-fund-allows-sustainability-researchers-use-campus-living-lab-0721
MIT Office of Sustainability announces awards to multi-departmental projects that test management, design, and operations solutions on campus. Fri, 21 Jul 2017 15:50:01 -0400Frankie Schembri | Office of Sustainabilityhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-new-fund-allows-sustainability-researchers-use-campus-living-lab-0721<p>The MIT Office of Sustainability (MITOS) has announced the recipients of the first-ever Campus Sustainability Incubator Fund, with $200,000 awarded between four multi-departmental projects, all of which use the MIT campus as a test bed for research in sustainable operations, management, and design.</p>
<p>The four project teams are lead by Kripa Varanasi of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Randy Kirchain and Jeremy Gregory of the Concrete Sustainability Hub, Lisa Anderson of the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Danielle Dahan of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.</p>
<p>“The seed funds will enable researchers to explore the physical facility and social context in which they are working, living and learning,” says Julie Newman, MITOS director and convener of the fund’s Advisory Committee. Newman calls the MIT campus&nbsp;a “rich environment for creating and testing sustainability solutions” at both the individual and building level to ensure they work at a city and global scale.</p>
<p>The selection committee included members from the Department of Architecture, the Environmental Solutions Initiative, the Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the MIT Sloan School of Management, among others. To be considered for funding, project teams needed to have student, faculty, and staff membership,&nbsp;a robust methodology for measuring outcomes, and a timeline for moving the needle&nbsp;on a measurable on-campus metric.</p>
<p>“We were looking for projects that take advantage of the interactions unique to MIT while making a measurable impact on how our campus runs day to day — those that foster collaborations between diverse stakeholders, including junior researchers, and bridge between MIT’s academic and operational departments,” Newman says.</p>
<p><strong>Water recapture at MIT’s power plant </strong></p>
<p>Department of Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Kripa Varanasi is receiving funding to test a water recapture device developed by&nbsp;his research group,&nbsp;installing it on the MIT Central Utilities Plant (CUP) cooling towers. Varanasi and his graduate students, Maher Damak and Karim Khalil<strong>, </strong>are collaborating with plant engineers Patrick Karalekas and Seth Kinderman&nbsp;and plant manager Jon Sepich at the CUP.</p>
<p>“Power plants consume a large portion of the water used on campus and around the world,” says Varanasi. “Testing our device at the CUP provides us with an invaluable pilot opportunity to scale-up, debug, and de-risk the technology before launching the product to the broader power plant industry.”</p>
<p>The Varanasi research group has developed a technology that uses electric fields to force escaping steam plumes from power plant towers into a device placed atop the cooling tower outlets. The device captures the water and reintroduces it&nbsp;back into the cooling cycle,&nbsp;reducing water losses for the plant.</p>
<p>The team will install their lab-scale prototype on the cooling towers of the CUP to test the device for efficiency and durability, and to optimize its performance. The researchers estimate that their device can save 15 million gallons of water per year, reducing MIT’s operational costs for the CUP.</p>
<p>“The team at the CUP is excited to have this opportunity to work with the academic community and contribute to MIT’s mission,” plant manager Sepich says. “If we can help Professor Varanasi and his team be successful, then this will not only have a positive environmental and economic impact on the CUP’s operation but on the power industry as a whole. We see the CUP as a valuable testing ground for energy and resource conservation measures, and we hope this is the first of many such endeavors.”</p>
<p><strong>Modeling the environmental impact of buildings at MIT </strong></p>
<p>Two research scientists in the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, Jeremy Gregory and Randy Kirchain, are receiving funding to implement a quantitative approach to evaluating&nbsp;the life cycle economic and environmental impacts of proposed new buildings on campus.</p>
<p>While life cycle assessments are already conducted at MIT to calculate buildings’ environmental impacts during the design phase, Gregory’s research team has developed a new method that can be implemented earlier in building design and planning stages than current analyses. It can be used to quantify both embodied impacts (building materials and construction) and operational impacts (energy consumption), mitigating the environmental and economic impacts of new construction projects on campus.</p>
<p>“We are excited to have the opportunity to implement our research in MIT’s building design process in order to improve our approach and reduce the life cycle environmental and economic footprint of MIT’s campus,” Gregory says.</p>
<p>The project team includes three members of the Department of Facilities: Director of Campus Construction Richard Amster, Director of Systems Performance and Turnover Wade Berner, and Sustainability Project Manager Randa Ghattas.</p>
<p><strong>Evaluating the benefits of recycling laboratory gloves</strong></p>
<p>The third recipient is Lisa Anderson, a research scientist in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Anderson&nbsp;will use her funding to investigate the net environmental benefit of recycling laboratory gloves and to explore the feasibility of expanding a pilot program launched by the department through MIT Green Labs last year.</p>
<p>During the six-month pilot program, participants collected more than 400 pounds of lab gloves from about 30 researchers in 10 labs. The team plans to study the feasibility of rolling out a larger glove recycling program at MIT, contingent on the results of a detailed analysis the team will conduct to compare the benefits of material recovery with the burden of the glove recycling process. If there is a net environmental benefit to glove recycling, Anderson hopes to help establish an Institute-wide program.</p>
<p>“Everyday when I walk into the lab, I ask myself: How do I balance research with sustainability?” Anderson says. “I think about all the resources that go into making scientific discoveries and pushing new technologies forward. Over half of a research grant can go towards overhead, such as paying for heating and cooling, that many researchers take for granted. I’m trying to bring sustainable practices into the research lab by repurposing a common consumable, uncontaminated lab gloves.”</p>
<p>Anderson will collaborate with chemical engineering graduate students Thomas Carney and Kosi Aroh, Department of Facilities Recycling Manager Ruth Davis, faculty and researchers from the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering, as well as several members of MIT’s Environmental Health and&nbsp;Safety Office and Green Labs program.</p>
<p><strong>Eliminating wasted energy with machine learning</strong></p>
<p>Danielle Dahan, a graduate research assistant at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, is receiving funding to collaborate with Professor Christopher Knittel of MIT Sloan, Wade Berner of MIT Facilities, and undergraduate Manuel Mundo to investigate the effectiveness of the fault detection and diagnostic (FDD) software used by MIT and other universities&nbsp;to prevent energy waste in HVAC systems.</p>
<p>For several years, MIT’s FDD system has been collecting data on over 70 campus buildings, alerting staff when an energy-wasting fault&nbsp;is detected. Dahan will apply machine learning and data analysis techniques to this data in order to understand the actual energy savings associated with correcting different types of system faults. The project will aid MIT Facilities in determining which faults to prioritize and help inform a cost-benefit analysis of installing FDD systems in more campus buildings.</p>
<p>“FDD systems have the potential to detect problems in HVAC systems that go unnoticed for years, wasting significant amounts of energy,” Dahan says. “This research allows us to quantify the impact of these systems and help inform policy and code requirements that promote the adoption of energy saving technologies.”</p>
<p><strong>Expanding the living laboratory </strong></p>
<p>The fund was made possible through a gift from Malcom M. Strandberg, a software engineer and supporter of sustainable technology who is inspired by his late father, longtime MIT Physics Professor Malcom W.P. “Woody” Strandberg PhD ’48. Strandberg&nbsp;has directed other parts of his gift to MIT’s D-Lab, to the MIT Office of Engineering Outreach’s STEM program, and to sustainability projects at the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center.</p>
<p>Using the campus as a living laboratory to test sustainability solutions is one of the central tenets of MITOS. The winning projects also align with the recommendations of MIT’s Sustainability Working Groups for&nbsp;on-campus sustainability priority areas: building design and construction, stormwater and land management, materials management, and green labs.</p>
<p>“Traditional laboratories are highly-controlled environments. The living laboratory, however, thrives on open systems, uncertainties, and diversity, but is still a place for robust science with detailed data collection and measurable outcomes,” says Paul Wolff, the Living Lab project manager at MITOS. “The campus becomes a rich environment for learning and discovery under this framework, and we hope to enable more projects to take advantage of this.”</p>
<p>The next round of applications for funding will open in 2018. For more updates and information please visit&nbsp;the <a href="http://sustainability.mit.edu/campus-sustainability-incubator-fund">Campus Sustainability Incubator Fund</a>&nbsp;online.</p>
The Varanasi research group visits the MIT Central Utilities Plant cooling towers, where they will test their water-recapture technology with support from the new Campus Sustainability Incubator Fund. Photo: Paul Wolff/MITOSAwards, honors and fellowships, Campus buildings and architecture, Civil and environmental engineering, Climate change, D-Lab, DMSE, Environment, Faculty, Grants, Funding, Machine learning, Staff, Sustainability, Facilities, Collaboration, ResearchSusan Solomon awarded the Royal Society&#039;s Bakerian Medalhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/susan-solomon-awarded-bakerian-medal-royal-society-0718
Professor of atmospheric chemistry honored for her contributions to atmospheric science.Tue, 18 Jul 2017 15:50:01 -0400Helen Hill | EAPShttps://news.mit.edu/2017/susan-solomon-awarded-bakerian-medal-royal-society-0718<p><a href="http://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/solos" target="_blank">Susan Solomon</a>, the&nbsp;Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies at MIT, has been awarded the UK Royal Society’s&nbsp;prestigious <a href="http://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/awards/bakerian-lecture/" target="_blank">Bakerian Medal</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://royalsociety.org/news/2017/07/top-scientists-honoured-by-the-royal-society/" target="_blank">Announced today in London</a>, Solomon is being honored “for her outstanding contributions in atmospheric science, in particular to the understanding of polar ozone depletion.” She will also give the Bakerian Lecture, a prize lecture on a topic related to the physical sciences.</p>
<p>Solomon has been a leader in the fields of atmospheric chemistry and climate change for more than three decades. In 1986, Solomon proposed that novel chemistry was taking place in Earth's atmosphere, and then used optical techniques to demonstrate that chlorine and bromine released by chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases were responsible for the ozone “hole” over Antarctica, which had been discovered just a year earlier. Those findings contributed to the establishment of the Montreal Protocol to reduce emissions of CFC gases beginning in 1987. Thirty years later, using observations and model calculations, it was again Solomon who led <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2016/signs-healing-antarctic-ozone-layer-0630" target="_self">the first study</a> to identify the earliest signs of the recovery of the Antarctic ozone layer, indicating the progress and effectiveness of those 1987 regulations.</p>
<p>Solomon joined MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) in 2011, after a long tenure at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; she now holds a joint appointment in MIT’s Department of Chemistry. Passionate about education, she played an active role in developing MIT’s minor in atmospheric chemistry and the minor in environment and sustainability. A gifted writer and speaker, she was also founding director of the Environmental Solutions Initiative.</p>
<p>Recent publications from the thriving research group Solomon has built at MIT have addressed observed changes in Southern Hemisphere wind patterns, thermal sea-level rise due to anthropogenic emissions of short-lived greenhouse gases, and connections between Arctic stratospheric ozone extremes and Northern Hemisphere climate.</p>
<p>The historic Bakerian Medal and Lecture, awarded annually by the Royal Society, was started in 1775 when&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Baker_(naturalist)" target="_blank">Henry Baker</a>, a prominent 18th century British naturalist,&nbsp;left&nbsp;£100 to establish a “spoken lecture given by a Fellow of the Royal Society&nbsp;on such part of&nbsp;natural history&nbsp;or&nbsp;experimental philosophy&nbsp;as the Society shall determine [to convey] scientific interests and importance, and encourage sharing of knowledge with others.”</p>
<p>Solomon will deliver her prize lecture in London in the spring of 2018. In the meantime, she presents the&nbsp;Seventh Annual John H. Carlson Lecture, “<a href="http://eapsweb.mit.edu/seventh-annual-john-h-carlson-lecture-susan-solomon" target="_blank">A Brief History of Environmental Successes</a>,” at Boston's New England Aquarium on Oct. 26.</p>
Susan Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental StudiesFaculty, Awards, honors and fellowships, Chemistry, EAPS, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Climate, Ozone, Pollution, School of Science, Climate change3 Questions: The future of the electric utilityhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-3-questions-francis-o-sullivan-future-of-electric-utilities-0714
MIT Energy Initiative Director of Research Francis O’Sullivan reflects on current trends in the utility industry, as well as potential solutions to current challenges.Fri, 14 Jul 2017 16:15:01 -0400Francesca McCaffrey | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-3-questions-francis-o-sullivan-future-of-electric-utilities-0714<p><em>Francis O’Sullivan, director of research for&nbsp;the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), recently led discussions about&nbsp;the future of the electric grid and clean energy technologies with leaders in industry, government, and academia at MITEI’s Associate Member Symposium. In the wake of the symposium, O’Sullivan reflects on several of its main themes: current trends in the industry, changes in customer behavior, and innovative&nbsp;potential responses to the challenges facing the utility industry today.</em></p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>There’s been a lot of talk about three current megatrends&nbsp;in energy: decentralization, digitalization, and decarbonization. Can you address briefly what each of these entails, and what’s driving this movement?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>These three megatrends are deeply connected. First, broadly, people appreciate that decarbonization is critical if we are to address climate change in a meaningful way, and electricity is the sector that can be decarbonized most rapidly. Today, ever-improving economics are driving a secular expansion in the use of clean energy technologies, particularly wind and solar for power generation. Solar is especially important, because as a technology, it’s unique. It can be effectively deployed at any scale, which adds flexibility to how power systems can be designed. It also provides end users with a new option for meeting their individual energy needs. People can choose solar on an individual, house-to-house basis.</p>
<p>In this way, decarbonization is connected to decentralization. It’s not just individual households driving decentralization, either — in fact, commercial and industry users are now in the vanguard of distributed energy adoption. The ambition is to realize a future energy system that is cleaner, more decentralized, and has lower operating costs and higher resiliency.</p>
<p>This is where digitalization comes in. Having these new assets connected to the system is one thing, but you need to be able to control and coordinate them in real time if their efficiency and resiliency potential is to be fully realized.</p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>How do you see electricity customers’ behavior changing, and what does this mean for utilities?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>Historically, consumers had very little choice in how they got their electricity. Then, starting in the ’90s, the restructuring of the energy industry and the introduction of retail choice meant that consumers gained the ability to choose from whom they bought their electricity. However, the modes of generation were still traditional ones. Today’s improved technology means people have much more choice now in terms of not just who supplies their power, but also how it is generated. There’s a subset of the public that actively seeks that greater choice. They’re interested in the environmental impact of their energy decisions. Cost-effectiveness and added resiliency are also important drivers behind this desire for greater diversity in energy services.</p>
<p>For the first time we now have avenues for offering electricity customers more choice. Utilities are responding to the fact that consumers want more bespoke solutions. The adoption of smart energy devices like Nest, for example, are indicative of this larger movement towards greater transparency and customer empowerment.</p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>What kind of infrastructure challenges are utilities facing now, and what kinds of emerging technologies are needed to help overcome them?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>The age of a utility’s infrastructure and the rate of demand growth across the region it covers are normal stresses that are going to affect any system over the years. More salient at this moment in time is the need to put in place the digital infrastructure that will support the effective integration of today’s new generation and storage technologies onto the grid. In addition to offering a pathway to greater resiliency and environmental benefits, a more digitized system has the potential to unlock new commercial value and improve overall welfare if it is used to communicate more accurate price signals for services up and down the electricity value chain that are more highly resolved spatially and temporally.</p>
<p>There’s pressure on utilities to make these infrastructure improvements, but there’s also a tension with regulators who must ensure that these investments are just and reasonable&nbsp;and for the broad benefit of ratepayers. The truth is, though, that we need this new digitized infrastructure if we wish to fully realize the technical and indeed economic benefits that the power sector’s newly expanded technology toolbox can offer.</p>
MIT Energy Initiative Director of Research Francis O'Sullivan is pondering decarbonization, decentralization, and the smart electric grid of the future.Photo: Dominick ReuterMIT Energy Initiative, Alternative energy, Carbon dioxide, Climate change, Energy, Energy storage, Global Warming, Emissions, Renewable energy, Research, Solar, Economics, 3 Questions, StaffClimate change to deplete some US water basins, reduce irrigated crop yields https://news.mit.edu/2017/climate-change-deplete-us-water-basins-reduce-irrigated-crop-yields-0711
By 2050, the Southwest will produce significantly less cotton and forage, researchers report.Tue, 11 Jul 2017 15:30:00 -0400Jennifer Chu | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/climate-change-deplete-us-water-basins-reduce-irrigated-crop-yields-0711<p>A new study by MIT climate scientists, economists, and agriculture experts finds that certain hotspots in the country will experience severe reductions in crop yields by 2050, due to climate change’s impact on irrigation.</p>
<p>The most adversely affected region, according to the researchers, will be the Southwest. Already a water-stressed part of the country, this region is projected to experience reduced precipitation by midcentury. Less rainfall to the area will mean reduced runoff into water basins that feed irrigated fields.</p>
<p>Production of cotton, the primary irrigated crop in the Southwest and in southern Arizona in particular, will drop to less than 10 percent of the crop yield under optimal irrigation conditions, the study projects. Similarly, maize grown in Utah, now only yielding 40 percent of the optimal expected yield, will decrease to 10 percent with further climate-driven water deficits.</p>
<p>In the Northwest, water shortages to the Great Basin region will lead to large reductions in irrigated forage, such as hay, grasses, and other crops grown to feed livestock. In contrast, the researchers predict a decrease in water stress for irrigation in the the southern Plains, which will lead to greater yields of irrigated sorghum and soybean.</p>
<p>If efforts are made to reduce greenhouse gases and mitigate climate change, the researchers find that water scarcity and its associated reductions in cotton and forage can be avoided.</p>
<p>“In the Southwest, water availability for irrigation is already a concern,” says first author Elodie Blanc, a research scientist at MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “If we mitigate, this could prevent added stress associated with climate change and a severe decrease in runoff &nbsp;in the western United States. But it will be even worse in the future if we don’t do anything at all.”</p>
<p>Blanc’s study appears in the journal <em>Earth’s Future</em>, and her co-authors are Erwan Monier, a principal research scientist at MIT; Justin Caron, an assistant professor at HEC Montreal; and Charles Fant, a former MIT postdoc.</p>
<p><strong>“A more integrated world”</strong></p>
<p>While many researchers have investigated the effects of climate change on crop yields, Blanc’s study is one of the first to consider how a changing climate may shape the availability and distribution of water basins on which irrigated crops depend.</p>
<p>“Most modeling studies that look at the impact of climate change on crop yield and the fate of agriculture don’t take into account whether the water available for irrigation will change,” Monier says.</p>
<p>In predicting how climate will affect irrigated crop yields in the future, the researchers also consider factors such as population and economic growth, as well as competing demands for water from various socioeconomic sectors, which are themselves projected to change as the climate warms.</p>
<p>“We try to be as representative of reality as possible,” Blanc says.</p>
<p>To do this, the researchers used a model of 99 major river basins in the country, which they combined with the MIT Integrated Global System Model-Community Atmosphere Model — a set of models that simulates the evolution of economic, demographic, trade, and technological processes. The models also include the greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants that result from these processes, and they incorporate all of that information within a global climate model that simulates the physical and chemical processes in the atmosphere, as well as in freshwater and ocean systems.</p>
<p>“We’re looking at a more integrated world, and how all these interactions will drive changes in irrigation,” Monier says.</p>
<p><strong>“Severely accentuated” shortages</strong></p>
<p>The researchers focused their global simulations on the U. S. and modeled the country’s evolving economic activities in different geographic regions to determine the water requirements for five main sectors: thermoelectric cooling; public supply, such as for drinking water and other public utilities; industrial demand; mining; and irrigation.</p>
<p>They then used a crop model to simulate daily water requirements for various crops, driven by the researchers’ modeled projections of precipitation and temperature, and compared these requirements with the amount of water predicted to be available for irrigation in a particular basin through the year 2050.</p>
<p>“The biggest finding is that it really makes a difference in specific regions, whether you take into account how irrigation availability will change in the future and how that will impact yields,” Monier says.</p>
<p>By 2050, the team projects that, under a business-as-usual scenario, in which no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases, a number of water basins in the U.S. will start experiencing water shortages. Several basins, particularly in the Southwest, will see existing water shortages “severely accentuated,” according to the study.</p>
<p>The researchers note that the basins that will be the most affected generally do not supply the largest areas of irrigated cropland. For example, though climate change will significantly reduce cotton production in the Southwest, the bulk of the country’s cotton production does not occur in this region.</p>
<p>“It may not matter too much for the total crop production of the U.S., but if you’re a farmer in that particular region that’s going to be impacted, that matters to you,” Monier says. “What we want to do is provide useful information that either farmers or land investors can use to look into the future and make decisions on where is the right region to expand irrigated agriculture, and where is it more risky. We also want to make clear that climate mitigation is better for U.S. irrigated agriculture than not doing anything.”</p>
<p><strong>A climate-changing landscape</strong></p>
<p>Under the same business-as-usual scenario, the researchers projected higher yields for irrigated crops such as wheat, soybean, and sorghum. The increased production in these crops is driven by higher precipitation predicted to occur in the central U.S., combined with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, which reduces a plant’s water requirements.</p>
<p>The researchers predict that crop yields for wheat, soybean, and sorghum should increase even more if mitigation measures are put in place. In addition to a business-as-usual scenario, the team ran its simulations under two mitigation scenarios, previously proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in which efforts are made to mitigate global warming to 2 and 3 degrees Celsius, relative to pre-industrial times.</p>
<p>They found that both mitigation scenarios should increase yields for all crops compared to the business-as-usual scenario, including cotton and forage, and that the more ambitious scenario has the potential to reduce the number of water-stressed basins.</p>
<p>Going forward, the researchers plan to factor into their simulations various ways in which climate change drives adaptation, and how such adaptations in turn shape crop patterns and the agricultural landscape.</p>
<p>“In the real world, if you’re a farmer and year after year you’re losing yield, you might decide, ‘I’m done farming,’ or switch to another crop that doesn’t require as much water, or maybe you move somewhere else,” Monier says. “That’s the next step: How would the agricultural sector adapt?”</p>
<p>This research was supported, in part, by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy.</p>
“In the Southwest, water availability for irrigation is already a concern,” says Elodie Blanc, a research scientist at MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “If we mitigate, this could prevent added stress associated with climate change and a severe decrease in runoff in the western United States. But it will be even worse in the future if we don’t do anything at all.”
Agriculture, Climate, Climate change, EAPS, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Food, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Policy, Research, School of Science, Weather, Department of Energy (DoE)3 Questions: Angela Belcher and Kristala Prather on the promise of energy biosciencehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/3q-angela-belcher-kristala-prather-mitei-energy-bioscience-low-carbon-energy-center-0710
Engineers and co-directors of MITEI&#039;s Energy Bioscience Low-Carbon Energy Center discuss their vision for transforming the energy system.Mon, 10 Jul 2017 10:10:01 -0400Kathryn M. O'Neill | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/3q-angela-belcher-kristala-prather-mitei-energy-bioscience-low-carbon-energy-center-0710<p><em>The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) continues to develop and expand its eight Low-Carbon Energy Centers, which facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration among MIT researchers, industry, and government to advance research in technology areas critical to addressing climate change. Here, the directors of the center focused on energy bioscience — Angela M. Belcher, the James Mason Crafts Professor of Biological Engineering and Materials Science,&nbsp;and Kristala L.J. Prather, the Arthur D. Little Professor of Chemical Engineering — discuss their vision for transforming the energy system.</em></p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>How can bioscience research help the world reach its goal of reducing carbon emissions?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>For billions of years, biology has employed an approach to energy generation and the synthesis of materials and chemicals that meets the needs of organisms with minimal production of byproducts that are poisonous to the environment. Bioscience is tapping into this vast toolset to transform today’s carbon-centric energy systems by creating new structures, devices, and materials that are significantly less energy-intensive and less harmful to the environment than today’s dominant energy technologies.</p>
<p>What’s exciting is that, while it took biology 4 billion years of trial and error to develop its extraordinarily efficient systems, modern bioscience techniques enable researchers to conduct a billion experiments in a matter of months. As a result, the field of synthetic biology, which is only about 15 years old, has already produced startling results.</p>
<p>At MIT, researchers working on energy-related applications have successfully engineered microorganisms to make biofuel from an assortment of starting substrates and used viruses to build batteries, sensors, and more efficient solar cells.</p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>How will the new Center for Energy Bioscience Research identify and address the major challenges in this area?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>The center partners with a diverse set of private companies, government entities, and non-governmental organizations to ensure that MIT develops practical biological and biologically inspired energy solutions to a wide range of concerns — from developing&nbsp;cleaner fuel sources to enhancing storage options, and from fueling new transportation alternatives to cleaning up the environment.</p>
<p>Drawing upon MIT’s extensive existing research capability in synthetic biology, microbial metabolic engineering, new DNA technologies, and directed evolution, the center plans to rapidly screen, model, design, and synthesize new materials with biological fidelity to harness the power of biology to shape a low-carbon future.</p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>What kind of research is currently under way at the center?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>One promising development is the biological generation of liquid fuels from natural gas. It has been estimated that the proven reserves of natural gas (methane) in the United States could sustain the transportation sector of this country for the next 50 years. However, methane’s low energy density makes it unsuitable for integration into current infrastructure.</p>
<p>MIT researchers are investigating biological processes for the low-cost conversion of methane to liquid fuel molecules with much higher energy density. For example, researchers have developed a novel bioprocess for converting syngas (obtainable from methane) or other waste gases containing carbon dioxide and a reducing gas such as hydrogen or carbon monoxide into biofuel. The process uses bacteria to convert waste gases into acetic acid — vinegar — which is subsequently converted to oil by an engineered yeast.</p>
<p>MIT researchers have also developed a virus that can improve solar cell efficiency by nearly one-third and demonstrated a technique that can&nbsp;significantly increase the photosynthetic activity of plants. Such increased activity could result in faster production of biomass for biofuel production, leading to faster capture and fixation of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.</p>
<p>On a broader scale, MIT researchers have recently developed a programming language for bacteria that makes it quicker and easier to create designer DNA for genetic parts such as sensors, memory switches, and biological clocks. Such parts can then be combined to modify existing cell functions and add new ones. This work promises to be useful in a wide range of energy applications, such as designing yeast that could ferment biomass into ethanol without toxic byproducts.</p>
<p><em>This article appears in the <a href="http://energy.mit.edu/energy-futures/spring-2017/" target="_blank">Spring 2017</a>&nbsp;issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative.</em></p>
Angela Belcher (left) and Kristala PratherPhoto: Kelley Travers/MIT Energy Initiative3 Questions, Faculty, MIT Energy Initiative, Biological engineering, Chemical engineering, DMSE, Materials Science and Engineering, Energy, Carbon, Sustainability, Oil and gas, School of Engineering, Emissions, Climate changeRising temperatures are curbing ocean’s capacity to store carbonhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/rising-temperatures-are-curbing-ocean-capacity-store-carbon-0706
Study finds large amounts of carbon dioxide, equivalent to yearly U.K. emissions, remain in surface waters.Thu, 06 Jul 2017 00:00:00 -0400Jennifer Chu | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/rising-temperatures-are-curbing-ocean-capacity-store-carbon-0706<p>If there is anywhere for carbon dioxide to disappear in large quantities from the atmosphere, it is into the Earth’s oceans. There, huge populations of plankton can soak up carbon dioxide from surface waters and gobble it up as a part of photosynthesis, generating energy for their livelihood. When plankton die, they sink thousands of feet, taking with them the carbon that was once in the atmosphere, and stashing it in the deep ocean.</p>
<p>The oceans, therefore, have served as a natural sponge in removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, helping to offset the effects of climate change.</p>
<p>But now MIT climate scientists have found that the ocean’s export efficiency, or the fraction of total plankton growth that is sinking to its depths, is decreasing, due mainly to rising global temperatures.</p>
<p>In a new study published in the journal <em>Limnology and Oceanography Letters,</em> the scientists calculate that, over the past 30 years, as temperatures have risen worldwide, the amount of carbon that has been removed and stored in the deep ocean has decreased by 1.5 percent.</p>
<p>To put this number in perspective, each year, about 50 billion tons of new plankton flourish in the surface ocean each year, while about 6 billion tons of dead plankton sink to deeper waters. A 1.5 percent decline in export efficiency would mean that about 100 million tons of extra plankton have remained near the surface each year.</p>
<p>“We figured the amount of carbon that is not sinking out as a result of global temperature change is similar to the total amount of carbon emissions that the United Kingdom pumps into the atmosphere each year,” says first author B.B. Cael, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “If carbon is just standing in the surface ocean, it’s easier for it to end up back in the atmosphere.”</p>
<p>Cael’s co-authors on the paper are Kelsey Bisson of the University of California at Santa Barbara and Mick Follows, an associate professor in EAPS.</p>
<p><strong>Photosynthesizers versus respirers</strong></p>
<p>In 2016, the team first started looking into whether sea surface temperature has an effect on the ocean’s export efficiency. The group’s main research focus is on marine microbes, including interactions between communities, and their effects on and responses to climate change.</p>
<p>In studying export efficiency, the researchers identified two processes in surface ocean microbes that affect the rate at which carbon is drawn down to the deep ocean: Photosynthesizing organisms such as plankton absorb carbon dioxide from surface waters, fixing carbon into their systems; respiring organisms such as bacteria and krill take in oxygen and emit carbon dioxide into the surrounding waters.</p>
<p>Based on the chemistry of photosynthesis and respiration, the researchers realized that the two processes respond differently depending on temperature. Photosynthesizers grow and die relatively faster in colder environments, while respirers are relatively more active in warmer temperatures.</p>
<p>In 2016, the researchers developed a simple model to predict the ocean’s rate of drawing down carbon at given sea surface temperatures. Their results matched with recorded observations of the amount of carbon exported to the deep ocean.</p>
<p>“We had a simple way to describe how we think temperature influences export efficiency, based on this fundamental metabolic theory,” Cael says. “Now, can we use that to see how export efficiency has changed over the time period where we have good temperature records? That’s how we can estimate whether export efficiency is changing as a result of climate change.”</p>
<p><strong>Out to sea</strong></p>
<p>For this new paper, the researchers used the model to estimate the ocean’s export efficiency over the last three decades. Since 1982, satellites, ships, and buoys have made measurements of sea surface temperatures around the world, which scientists have averaged for each measured location and aggregated into publicly available databases.</p>
<p>For this study, the team used temperature measurements from three different databases, taken every month from 1982 to 2014, for locations around the world. The group used the temperature to estimate export efficiency across the global ocean for each month, based on their simple model. They traced the change in export efficiencies across the globe, over the 33-year period during which measurements were available.</p>
<p>They found that, worldwide, the rate at which the ocean draws down carbon has declined by 1 to 2 percent since 1982. Sea surface temperatures have increased during this period.</p>
<p>“People probably expected a decline in export efficiency, but the thing I find interesting is, we have a nice way to try and quantify it,” Cael says. “We’re able to estimate that over last 30 years, export efficiency has declined by 1 or 2 percent, so 1 to 2 percent less of total plankton productivity is making it out of the surface ocean, which is actually a pretty big number.”</p>
<p>Cael says the team’s model could potentially be applied to predict the ocean’s future as a carbon sink, though uncertainty in temperature projections makes this a much more complicated goal.</p>
<p>“How carbon moves around on Earth is fundamental to understanding both Earth’s biosphere and climate, and requires understanding how carbon moves through the ocean,” Cael says. “This [model] is something you could potentially apply to temperature projections, to guess how carbon will move through the Earth in the future.”</p>
<p>This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.</p>
MIT climate scientists have found that the ocean’s export efficiency, or the fraction of total plankton growth that is sinking to its depths, is decreasing, due mainly to rising global temperatures.Image: MIT NewsClimate change, EAPS, Emissions, Environment, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Oceanography and ocean engineering, Research, School of ScienceBolstering public support for state-level renewable energy policieshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/bolstering-public-support-for-state-level-renewable-energy-policies-0630
Analysis shows the design and framing of renewable energy policies can strengthen public support — or opposition.Fri, 30 Jun 2017 11:00:00 -0400Nancy W. Stauffer | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/bolstering-public-support-for-state-level-renewable-energy-policies-0630<p>Since the 1980s, the United States has often been a world leader in supporting renewable energy technologies at the state and federal level. Thirty-seven states have enacted binding or voluntary renewable portfolio standards (RPS) requiring that a portion of the electricity mix come from renewable sources by a given date. But since 2011, adoption of such standards has slowed, and in the past several years there have been many attempts — some of them successful — to weaken, freeze, or repeal renewable energy laws.</p>
<p>Given the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, increased federal investment in renewable energy is unlikely for the foreseeable future. As a result, state-level renewable energy policies will likely be central to driving new deployment. Past research has shown that public opinion plays a crucial role in facilitating a political consensus around new policies in U.S. states. If that’s true for renewable energy policies, then people’s views may have a major influence on future actions taken by their states.&nbsp;</p>
<p>For the past three years, MIT Associate Professor Christopher Warshaw of the Department of Political Science and Leah Stokes SM ’15, PhD ’15, now an assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, have been examining the interaction between public opinion and renewable energy policymaking. First, is there evidence that public opinion and energy policy align within a particular state? And second, what determines that public opinion? For example, can the design of a given RPS policy or how it’s presented to the public — that is, how it’s portrayed or framed — increase or decrease support for the policy?</p>
<p>Now, an analysis by Warshaw and Stokes finds that state legislators are, in fact, broadly responsive to public opinion in this policy arena. And based on data from a public opinion survey, the researchers offer practical advice on how to bolster public support for renewable policies. Their findings are <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2017107" target="_blank">published today</a> in the journal <em>Nature Energy.</em></p>
<p><strong>Public opinion and renewable energy policy, state by state&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>To begin investigating their questions, Warshaw and Stokes turned to data gathered by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a major survey supported by 56 universities, including MIT, that has its origins in a survey first funded by the MIT Energy Initiative a decade ago. In the 2014 cooperative survey, 56,200 people were asked whether they supported an RPS policy that “requires the use of a minimum amount of renewable fuels (wind, solar, and hydroelectric) in the generation of electricity, even if electricity prices increase a little.”</p>
<p>Using the 2014 survey data, Warshaw and Stokes explored the relationship between public opinion and policy on a state-by-state basis. Their analysis showed that in most states a majority of the public supports renewable energy requirements — although frequently by a narrow margin. In addition, public support within each state is strongly correlated with the RPS policy now in effect. Thirty-seven states plus the District of Columbia have RPS policies that are congruent with the views of a majority of their citizens, leaving only 13 that don’t. All 13 states where more than 60 percent of the public supports an RPS have a binding RPS policy, with varying levels of ambitiousness. As public support drops close to or below 50 percent, states are much less likely to have a binding RPS.</p>
<p>“Overall, these findings suggest that state legislators are broadly responsive to public opinion on this issue,” says Warshaw. “If public support for renewable energy policies increased, we could expect to see more renewable energy laws.”&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>A new experiment&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>In other areas of policymaking, research has shown that exactly how a policy is designed and presented can significantly impact whether the public supports or opposes it. Thus, it’s possible that certain details of RPS policies could be swaying public opinion. “We needed to gauge how the design and framing of renewable energy policies may affect people’s support for them across the states,” says Warshaw. He and Stokes set out to design a survey experiment that would give them insight into what drives people’s opinions of renewable energy policies.&nbsp;</p>
<p>They knew many factors could influence support for an RPS policy — from possible changes in electric bills to impacts on employment opportunities. A simple survey experiment might involve randomizing one such attribute at a time. For example, one group could be told that the new policy will increase residential electric bills, and the group’s response could then be compared to that of a control group that receives no information about added costs.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But the attributes of interest here are independent — they have no impact on one another — so the researchers could investigate all of them simultaneously. With this approach, the effects of the different attributes are all measured on the same scale. When the results are in, it’s easy to see which factors are most important and warrant special attention or concern.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In the new survey, all recipients received a central statement posing the possibility of the recipient’s state adopting a new RPS bill requiring that the state meet 35 percent of its electricity needs with renewable energy sources by the year 2025. Along with that&nbsp;description, they received a variety of additional statements about specific attributes of the bill, randomly distributed among the survey recipients. For each attribute, some (randomly selected) people received no added information, thereby serving as the control group in the experiment.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Warshaw and Stokes received replies from about 2,500 respondents. They then performed a statistical analysis on all the data to determine how much information on each of the attributes changed people’s views of the basic RPS policy from those of the control group.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Economic incentives — costs and jobs&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>The results show that an increase in residential energy costs&nbsp;has a far greater impact on the outcome than any of the other attributes. Adding $2 to an electricity bill decreased support for an RPS policy by about 6 percent, while a $10 increase decreased support by fully 13 percent. Those changes are large enough to flip majority public opinion within some states from supporting to opposing RPS policies. In the $2 case, 13 states shifted from supporting to opposing; in the $10 case, 33 states moved to the opposing side.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The possible impact on jobs is another big factor — one that can push support either way. Being told that the bill won’t create any jobs prompted 3.2 percent of respondents to oppose the bill. With that change, five states flipped from majority support to majority opposition. On the other hand, learning that the RPS policy will probably create several thousand jobs caused 7 percent of respondents to support the bill, a change that flipped eight states from majority opposition to majority support. “So if people think these policies will create a lot of jobs, public support increases enough to lead almost every state — except possibly the most conservative ones — to support RPS policies,” Stokes notes.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The results provide some interesting clues about what people believe now. For example, the response to added costs suggests that many people think renewables won’t — or shouldn’t — cost them anything extra. The prospect of a $2 increase in their electricity bill prompts a shift toward opposition. If people started out thinking renewable standards would cost them something, adding just $2 to the bill probably wouldn’t have elicited such a change.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The negative response to learning that the new policy will bring no extra jobs conveys a different message. “It may suggest that in the absence of any added information, people think the new bill will lead to a small increase in jobs — which frankly is generally&nbsp;about right,” says Warshaw. Once again, the experiment uncovered starting assumptions that people may have — perhaps without knowing it.</p>
<p><strong>Environmental impacts&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Another reason to support using renewable energy may be the promise of environmental benefits. The survey tested that idea by telling some respondents that increasing renewable energy will reduce harmful air pollution in their state, including toxins such as mercury. Learning that air pollution will go down brings almost as large a response as learning that employment will go up: 6.7 percent of people move to the supporting side. “So emphasizing either job creation or air quality benefits could cause eight of the 10 states where a majority now opposes RPS bills — and where RPS policies largely do not exist — to flip to a majority in support,” says Stokes.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Interestingly, linking RPS policies to climate change had no impact on public support. The survey included various statements about the effects of RPS policies on greenhouse gas emissions and about whether or not supporters and opponents believe climate change to be a serious problem. While the added information increased support slightly, the change wasn’t large enough to be statistically significant.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Warshaw believes that the lack of impact isn’t because people don’t know or care about climate change. “I think it’s because they already have a pretty strong view on the connection between renewable energy policies and climate change,” he says. “Their view is already baked in, so you can’t frame the question in a way that triggers a change.”&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Partisan support&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>One more factor of interest is the role played by elites in U.S. political parties. Some research suggests that partisanship isn’t important for energy policy, even though it has been shown to influence public support in other policy domains. So the researchers added some partisan cues.&nbsp;</p>
<p>They found that when people were told that Democratic legislators support the RPS policy, public support increased by 2.4 percent, and three states flipped from majority opposition to majority support. When respondents were told that Republican legislators support it, public support increased by 5.5 percent, and seven states flip to majority support. Interestingly, the results show that if an elite affiliated with one political party supports the RPS policy, there is no statistically significant decrease in support by respondents affiliated with the other party.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Warshaw believes that support by partisan elites can have a big impact in part because people’s views on renewable energy “aren’t super-strongly formed,” he says. “On policies they don’t know much about, people look to their elected officials to tell them what the right thing to believe is. There’s considerable political science evidence that that’s true.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>Stokes notes that while none of the statements relating to climate change seemed to influence public opinion in the survey, in the absence of a coherent federal policy, state-level RPS policies may actually prove the most effective means of securing climate benefits. That prospect underscores the need for continuing public engagement during the decades-long process of weaning the U.S. energy system off fossil fuels.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This research was supported by the MIT Energy Initiative Seed Fund Program. While at MIT, Leah Stokes was a 2010-2011 Siemens-MIT Energy Fellow and a 2013-2014 Martin Family Sustainability Fellow. Logistical support was provided by the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab.</p>
New research finds certain aspects of how state-level renewable portfolio standards are designed and presented can set people’s minds for or against such policies — and that in this arena, public opinion does influence policymaking. For example, learning that a renewable energy policy will likely create several thousand jobs led to a significant increase in supporters of that policy.Photo: Skeeze/PixabayResearch, Energy, Political science, Environment, Emissions, Renewable energy, Policy, Government, Climate change, Behavioral economics, SHASS, MIT Energy InitiativeCharting a better future for Africahttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-joint-program-research-scientist-kenneth-strzepek-is-charting-a-better-future-for-africa-0622
Kenneth Strzepek applies models to help decision makers advance food security and sustainable development in a climate-compromised continent.Thu, 22 Jun 2017 08:10:01 -0400Mark Dwortzan | MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Changehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-joint-program-research-scientist-kenneth-strzepek-is-charting-a-better-future-for-africa-0622<p>Almost 25 percent of the world’s malnourished population lives in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where more than 300 million people depend on maize (corn) for much of their diet. The most widely-produced crop by harvested area in SSA, maize is also highly sensitive to drought. Because maize in this region is grown largely on rainfed rather than irrigated land, any future changes in precipitation patterns due to climate change could significantly impact crop yields. Assessing the likely magnitude and locations of such yield changes in the coming decades will be critical for decision makers seeking to help their nations and regions adapt to climate change and minimize threats to food security and to rural economies that are heavily dependent on agriculture.</p>
<p>Toward that end, a team of five researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) has applied a broad range of multi- and individual climate model ensembles and crop models to project climate-related changes to maize yields in Africa throughout most of the 21st century. Accounting for uncertainty in climate model parameters — which is most pronounced in high-producing semiarid zones — the researchers project widespread yield losses in the Sahel region and Southern Africa, insignificant change in Central Africa, and sub-regional increases in East Africa and at the southern tip of the continent. The wide range of results highlights a need for risk management strategies that are robust and adaptive to uncertainty, such as the diversification of rural economies beyond the agricultural sector.</p>
<p>“In the wet regions you’d feel very secure in making large-scale, long-term agricultural decisions, knowing that the probability of error due to climate change is small,” says Joint Program Research Scientist <a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/about-us/personnel/strzepek-kenneth">Kenneth Strzepek</a>, one of the study’s principal co-investigators (the other is <a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/about-us/personnel/solomon-susan">Susan Solomon</a>, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies in the EAPS Department). “In the arid regions, where the magnitude of uncertainty is much higher, you’d need to proceed with caution. That means developing strategies that hedge on which crops are cultivated, learning more about how the climate is changing before making any major investments, and considering alternatives to agriculture for economic development.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017EF000539/epdf">study</a>&nbsp;was published in&nbsp;March in the journal <em>AGU Earth’s Future&nbsp;</em>and was&nbsp;funded by the <a href="https://jwafs.mit.edu/">Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab</a> and supported in-kind by the World Bank. It&nbsp;is right in Strzepek’s wheelhouse. For more than 40 years, he has cultivated expertise in environmental science and economics and applied it to promote sustainable development and poverty reduction, with an emphasis on optimizing the use of water resources in the developing world.</p>
<p><strong>Engineering sustainable development and poverty reduction</strong></p>
<p>Inspired by the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1972, Strzepek started out pursuing a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering at MIT, with the ultimate goal of working on U.S. environmental concerns. But during the summer of his sophomore year, after contracting a waterborne disease while participating in a water supply project in Mali, he felt called to shift his focus to the interplay of poverty, development, and public health. Propelled by this experience and the tenets of his Christian faith, he resolved to apply his engineering skill set to help alleviate poverty and promote sustainable economic development in resource-limited countries.</p>
<p>To enhance his effectiveness in carrying out this mission, he spent the next eight years at MIT earning BS and MS degrees in civil engineering&nbsp;and a PhD in water resources systems analysis. He also&nbsp;completed an MA in economics from the University of Colorado (where he also served as a professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering); and&nbsp;now, as a true lifelong learner, is midway through a PhD program in economics at the University of Hamburg in Germany. Anchored by this interdisciplinary academic background, he has spent his career working at the intersection of water, agriculture, environmental, and economic policy, modeling these systems to understand their linkages and implications for investment and policymaking in both developing and developed regions.</p>
<p>Today Strzepek splits his time three ways. First, as a research scientist at the MIT Joint Program he&nbsp;churns&nbsp;out peer-reviewed papers, such as the Earth’s Future study, that explore impacts of climate change on natural resources and economic development. As an educator, he serves as an adjunct professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government focused on water and climate policy and as an adjunct faculty member at Denver Seminary in Colorado, where he teaches a course on development and poverty. Finally, as&nbsp;a consultant for the U.S. government, the World Bank, and the United Nations, he works on projects focused on sustainable development and poverty reduction.</p>
<p>For the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Strzepek has contributed to the 2015 <a href="https://www.epa.gov/climate-change-science/climate-change-impacts-and-risk-analysis-cira">Climate Change Impacts and Risk Analysis (CIRA)</a> report,&nbsp;which estimated the environmental and economic benefits to the U.S. of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. For the World Bank, he has helped develop a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/opinion/how-to-share-water-along-the-nile.html?_r=0">comprehensive framework agreement</a> between all sovereign states in the Nile River basin to cooperatively manage their shared water resource. And as a nonresidential senior research fellow at the U.N. University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), he helps lead a research project Development under Climate Change (DUCC), which examines the impact of climate change on water resources, agriculture, and other infrastructure systems, and the consequences for economic development in Africa and other developing regions. He is also a contributor to a Joint Program/UNU-WIDER project called Africa Energy Futures, which is exploring&nbsp;the potential economic benefits of shifting the continent's energy system from fossil fuels&nbsp;to renewables.</p>
<p>“Ken Strzepek is never one to lose the forest for the trees,” says Channing Arndt, another senior research fellow at UNU-WIDER. “Whether engaging in politically sensitive analysis of the Nile River or assessing the development implications of climate change, he has an uncanny ability to get to the crux of the issue. His many contributions include more realistic views of the implications of climate change in Southern Africa.”</p>
<p>Raffaello Cervigni, a lead environmental economist with the World Bank’s Environment and Natural Resources Global Practice, also praises Strzepek's&nbsp;approach.</p>
<p>“Ken combines three traits that make him particularly effective in development work — world-class academic accomplishments, unbounded energy for Africans, and the right dose of humility,” says Cervigni, who has led several World Bank assignments in Africa in which Strzepek served as a lead consultant or technical advisor. “This combination means he is almost uniquely able to fully engage his developing country counterparts.”</p>
<p><strong>Charting a better future for Africa under uncertainty </strong></p>
<p>As he works to reduce poverty and expand sustainable economic development in Africa, Strzepek aims to ensure that nations in the region don’t either overreact or underreact to climate change. To assess the economic implications of such reactions, he considers the opportunity costs&nbsp;of policies designed to mitigate or adapt to climate change, i.e., what critical economic development projects, from new schools to housing, could have been funded if such policies were not implemented.</p>
<p>Of particular interest to Strzepek is determining&nbsp;the role of agricultural development in ensuring food security and as a potential engine of economic growth across the continent, all while the magnitude, pace, and impacts of temperature and precipitation change remain uncertain.</p>
<p>“Policymakers and investors are asking:&nbsp;How do we proceed with all of this uncertainty?” says Strzepek. “The Earth’s Future paper is one of the first attempts to try to see if there are any regions of Africa where the level of uncertainty is lower than we might expect. Using different climate models and accounting for variables that range from temperature to soil nutrient levels, is there a consistent signal that can direct decision-makers on how to proceed in the near future? We believe that our findings, which quantify the level of uncertainty by region, can help guide that process now.”</p>
<p><em>This article originally appeared in the&nbsp;</em><a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/sites/default/files/newsletters/files/GlobalChanges-Spring2017.pdf"><em>Spring 2017 issue</em></a><em> of Global Changes, a biannual publication of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.&nbsp;</em></p>
Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change Research Scientist Kenneth Strzepek meets with Ethiopian Minister of Agriculture Tefera Deribew.Photo: Brent BoehlertJoint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, School of Science, EAPS, Africa, Agriculture, Climate change, Developing countries, Development, Environment, Food, Global Warming, Research, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS)Iberdrola and MIT Energy Initiative announce $10.3 million collaborationhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/iberdrola-mit-energy-initiative-announce-collaboration-0621
Funding will establish MIT professorship and support low-carbon energy and climate initiatives.Wed, 21 Jun 2017 17:00:01 -0400Emily Dahl | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/iberdrola-mit-energy-initiative-announce-collaboration-0621<p>Building on a shared commitment to driving innovation and education in energy and climate solutions, MIT President L. Rafael Reif and <a href="https://www.iberdrola.com/home">Iberdrola</a> Chairman and CEO Ignacio S. Galán met on MIT’s campus to renew and significantly expand the collaboration between the Institute and the global power company.</p>
<p>The $10.3 million, five-year collaboration aims to advance technologies and policies that contribute to the energy transition and the fight against climate change, supporting numerous efforts through the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and related MIT initiatives. &nbsp;</p>
<p>“Climate change and the policies created to address it have significant implications for businesses — it will fundamentally change products, services, and operating models,” says Galán. “Successful companies need to actively seek the opportunities a clean economy creates. Iberdrola constitutes a perfect example of the potential of the electricity sector. The company is a world leader in renewable energies, which represent almost 60 percent of Iberdrola’s mix, and we plan to reduce further our carbon dioxide emission intensity by at least 50 percent by 2030. MIT, one of the world's leading idea incubators, is the perfect research collaborator to deliver the technologies and solutions that will lead us toward a clean energy future.”</p>
<p>“Strong industry collaborations are critical to achieving MIT's vision for a clean energy future,” says Reif.&nbsp;“By pairing the excellence of MIT's researchers with Iberdrola's embrace of clean energy infrastructure, we have an exciting opportunity to make important contributions to address climate change.&nbsp;We look forward to working with our Iberdrola colleagues to identify critical solutions to this complex global challenge.”</p>
<p>Iberdrola will benefit from MIT’s advanced platform for research, development, and technological innovation, to educate the workforce needed to build and operate tomorrow’s energy systems. The company also aims to achieve a competitive advantage by systematically improving its business performance and anticipating future market trends. The agreement reinforces the three main objectives that shape Iberdrola’s program with academic institutions: knowledge transfer, talent attraction, and contribution to the company’s social dividend.</p>
<p>The agreement includes $5 million in funding to create the Iberdrola-AVANGRID professorship at MIT, dedicated to research and education in power systems engineering. Both MIT and Iberdrola recognize the urgent need to upgrade and modernize electricity infrastructure in the U.S. and globally, transforming power systems and creating the “utilities of the future.” To meet these challenges, industry and governments will need a new generation of young professionals ready to discover and implement innovative energy solutions. In addition to the professorship, Iberdrola is making a robust commitment to fund energy education opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students through MITEI. The agreement also includes training for Iberdrola Group employees as well as fellowships and internships at Iberdrola worldwide operating companies for MIT energy engineering students.</p>
<p>Iberdrola will become a sustaining member of MITEI, committing $5 million over five years to advance key technologies and policies for addressing climate change. As part of its MITEI membership, Iberdrola will join MITEI’s Low-Carbon Energy Center for Electric Power Systems, the mission of which is to enable the efficient evolution of the electric grid and the electric power sector. It is one of eight collaborative low-carbon energy research centers announced in 2015 as part of MIT’s Plan for Action on Climate Change, a vital component of which is to deepen engagement with industry, government, and the philanthropic community to develop climate solutions. The energy education commitment is also part of this sustaining membership. As another element of its membership, Iberdrola will contribute to MITEI’s Seed Fund to support early-stage energy research at MIT.</p>
<p>Through the agreement, Iberdrola will also expand its support of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and will conduct sponsored research through the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.</p>
<p>To support energy entrepreneurship, the company will provide $300,000 to the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, which connects MIT undergraduate and graduate students with tailored educational experiences and mentoring, and provides them with funding to start up innovative projects or entrepreneurial initiatives.</p>
<p>This expanded collaboration follows Iberdrola’s multi-year sponsorship of MITEI’s <a href="http://energy.mit.edu/research/utility-future-study/">Utility of the Future study</a> and the corresponding report released in December 2016. The study — which MITEI conducted with Spain’s Institute for Research in Technology at Comillas Pontifical University (IIT-Comillas) — highlighted emerging trends in the electric power sector, where decarbonization, digitization, renewable energies and energy storage will continue to define the industry and determine a more flexible and efficient consumption of energy.</p>
MIT President L. Rafael Reif (left) and Iberdrola Chairman and CEO Ignacio S. GalánPhoto courtesy of Iberdrola MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Climate, Climate change, Industry, Energy, Alternative energy, Renewable energy, Carbon Emissions, Solar, President L. Rafael Reif, CollaborationMeasuring biological dust in the windhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/dan-cziczo-maria-zawadowicz-measuring-biological-dust-in-upper-atmosphere-0620
A technique developed in the Cziczo Lab may be the most accurate way of identifying biological aerosols from mineral dust in the atmosphere and analyzing their contribution to cloud formation and climate change.Tue, 20 Jun 2017 17:30:01 -0400Lauren Hinkel | Oceans at MIThttps://news.mit.edu/2017/dan-cziczo-maria-zawadowicz-measuring-biological-dust-in-upper-atmosphere-0620<p>In the popular children’s story “Horton Hears a Who!” author Dr. Seuss tells of a gentle and protective elephant who stumbles upon a speck of dust that harbors&nbsp;a community of microscopic creatures called the Whos living the equally tiny town of Whoville. Throughout their journey together, Horton argues for the existence of the Whos traveling around in the air on a dust speck, while doubters dispute the finding. Ultimately, through observation, evidence for the organisms emerges, but regardless of the outcome, this speck altered a world greater than its own.</p>
<p>While this tale is a work of fiction, climate and atmospheric scientists have considered a real-life Whoville scenario — biological particles and inorganic material riding around in the atmosphere affecting the climate. Previous research has shown that some aerosols are very good at nucleating ice, which could form clouds in the troposphere. But due to complex atmospheric chemistries and a lack of data, scientists aren’t sure what percentage of these ice active particles are biological in nature and abundant enough in the troposphere to have an impact on climate. Furthermore, chemically parsing the metaphorical Whos from their speck has proved difficult — until now.</p>
<p>Atmospheric science researchers in the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate (<a href="http://eapsweb.mit.edu/graduate-program/paoc" target="_blank">PAOC</a>) in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (<a href="http://eapsweb.mit.edu/news/2017/measuring-biological-dust-in-the-wind" target="_blank">EAPS</a>) have&nbsp;found a way to differentiate biological material in the atmosphere (bioaerosols) from non-biological particulates with a higher accuracy than other methods,&nbsp;using machine learning. When applied to previously-collected atmospheric samples and data, their findings support evidence that on average&nbsp;these bioaerosols globally&nbsp;make up less than 1 percent of the particles in the upper troposphere — where they could influence cloud formation and by extension, the climate — and not around 25&nbsp;to&nbsp;50 percent&nbsp;as some previous research suggests.</p>
<p>The work, lead by MIT associate professor of atmospheric chemistry <a href="http://climate-science.mit.edu/people/djcziczo" target="_blank">Dan Cziczo</a>&nbsp;and graduate student&nbsp;<a href="http://climate-science.mit.edu/people/mariaz" target="_blank">Maria Zawadowicz</a>, was <a href="http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/17/7193/2017/acp-17-7193-2017-discussion.html" target="_blank">published</a> last week in the journal&nbsp;<em>Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.</em></p>
<p><strong>Bioaerosols in a complex climate system</strong></p>
<p>Bioaerosols, a subset of atmospheric aerosols, are biological particulates or liquids suspended in the air at any given time. These emissions consist of whole and fragmented airborne bacteria, fungal spores, yeast, viruses, pollens, and other materials from the environment. Their solid, non-biological counterparts, inorganic aerosols, include materials such as mineral dust particles such as&nbsp;apatite and monazite, and industrial combustion products like fly ash.</p>
<p>Scientists have long been interested in bioaerosols because of their potential to form cirrus ice&nbsp;clouds, which have major&nbsp;implications for the climate — reflecting, absorbing, and transmitting sunlight as well as thermal infrared radiation from Earth. Bacteria like&nbsp;<em>Pseudomonas syringae</em>&nbsp;use their nucleating properties to form ice crystals on tomato plants and humans used them to&nbsp;create artificial snow. While atmospheric and climate modeling suggests that bioaerosols, globally averaged, are not abundant and efficient enough at freezing to significantly influence cloud formation, research findings have varied significantly.</p>
<p>“There has been a lot of debate recently — the last five to seven years — about how much biological material is in the atmosphere,” Cziczo says. “[The study findings] are all over the map, but there are a cluster of studies that say it’s a few percent of the atmospheric aerosol and there’s a few studies that say it’s a lot, 25 percent&nbsp;or 50 percent. And so, those are sort of the two camps that have been out there, and you can imagine that these have really different effects on our climate system, on precipitation, on chemistry.”</p>
<p>Until now, gathering and making positive identification of bioaerosols has been difficult. Measurement techniques specific to bioaerosol include filter collection coupled with electron microscopy or optical microscopy with fluorescent staining. Scientists have also used in-situ fluorescence with a wideband integrated bioaerosol sensor (WIBS),&nbsp;in addition to measuring particles’ shapes and sizes. The problem with this is interference — bioaerosols are often found to have chemical signatures similar to smoke, an inorganic aerosol. Additionally, researchers have tried culturing samples for microbial strains, as well as analyzing their data offline, in the lab. These techniques inject significant uncertainty into the measurements and some studies reported bioaerosol concentrations greater than the total aerosol measurement obtained, which is impossible.</p>
<p>In&nbsp;case&nbsp;that&nbsp;wasn’t complicated enough, aerosols become chemically and physically altered as they enter the troposphere, interacting with other atmospheric compounds, and the longer they are there before falling out, the more they age and mix. Finally, all of this varies by region, season, climate, and altitude, which can affect measurements, further blurring the boundary between bioaerosols and inorganic aerosols, and making quantification challenging.</p>
<p>Cziczo’s research group is interested in the interrelationship of particulate matter and cloud formation. His team utilizes laboratory and field studies to elucidate how small particles interact with water vapor to form droplets and ice crystals, which are important players in the Earth’s climate system. Experiments include using small cloud chambers in the laboratory to mimic atmospheric conditions that lead to cloud formation and observing clouds in situ from remote mountaintop sites or through the use of research aircraft.</p>
<p><strong>Aerosol breakdown</strong></p>
<p>“One of the things that we suspected was that the previous ways of determining biological material probably over-counted [their abundance] because they were looking and characterizing other things as being biological that really weren’t,” Cziczo says.</p>
<p>Zawadowicz adds: “Everything in the atmosphere is very highly processed. It’s what confounds a lot of these measurements”.</p>
<p>So, in an effort to rein in the uncertainty surrounding bioaerosols in the atmosphere and constrain their influence on cloud formation processes, Cziczo and Zawadowicz, along with collaborators at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, developed a technique that couples a technique called particle analysis by laser mass spectrometry (PALMS) with machine learning. Here, single particle mass spectrometry&nbsp;is used to ablate and ionize aerosols one at a time, breaking them down into ion fragments and clusters, which are then detected by the instrument. Each aerosol analyzed this way produces a spectrum with identifiable features of its composition, like a chemical fingerprint.</p>
<p>The group leveraged the presence of phosphorus in the mass spectra to train the classification machine learning algorithm on known samples and then, primed, applied it to field data acquired from Desert Research Institute’s Storm Peak Laboratory in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and from the Carbonaceous Aerosol and Radiative Effects Study based in the town of Cool, California.</p>
<p>“So, what Maria did was she grabbed a whole host of different particles, focusing on biological ones, bacteria, both in a living and dead state, fungal spores, pollen, yeast, just about anything you could imagine that could turn into an atmospheric particulate,”&nbsp;Cziczo says.&nbsp;“And she found ways of dispersing these materials and then bringing them into the instrument so that we could see their composition.”</p>
<p>Some particles were chemically aged to mimic atmospheric interactions, others, physically broken down so they were small enough to be analyzed and nebulized.</p>
<p>Knowing that the principal atmospheric emissions of phosphorus are from mineral dust, combustion products, and biological particles, they exploited the presence of phosphate&nbsp;and organic nitrogen ions and their characteristic ratios in known samples to classify the particles. In bioaerosols, phosphorus mostly occurs in phospholipid bilayers and nucleic acids, whereas in mineral dust like apatite and monazite, it’s found as in the form of calcium phosphate. But the division isn’t cut and dried; compounds like soil dust can include internal mixtures of biological and inorganic components.</p>
<p>Once analyzed, other spectral peaks and markers were used to provide additional evidence for the classification as biological or non-biological and increase the confidence in the algorithm and its results.</p>
<p>“We found that if we do some ratios of certain components in the mass spectrum that there are certain clusters that form, and we employed some advanced statistical techniques to disentangle the clusters and see which signatures are biological and which aren’t,” Zawadowicz says. The new technique was able to accurately classify 97 percent&nbsp;of the spectra, and when applied to spectra from field data, found that less than 1 percent was biological for the global average. Phosphorus emissions inventories helped to confirm this.</p>
<p><strong>The unlikeliness of a real-life Whoville</strong></p>
<p>While the list of bioaerosols tested and data sets used — which didn’t include locations and times of high and low bioaerosol concentration — were not exhaustive, the group found convincing evidence that, when it came to cirrus cloud formation, bioaerosols were an unlikely culprit. Previous research assumed that most of the phosphorus found in the atmosphere was biological, but Cziczo points out that this conflicts with phosphorus emissions inventories, implying that inorganic compounds were often mistaken for biological ones. For Cziczo this finding that bioaerosols accounted for less than 1 percent&nbsp;on average was the smoking gun.</p>
<p>“It’s not enough to say that a particle is good at nucleating ice, it also has to have an abundance that causes that cloud formation to happen. And it looks much less certain now that we have enough of these biologicals to create the effect that some people have suggested in the literature,” Cziczo says. “Instead, it’s much more likely that there are other things that are causing the ice nucleation like the mineral dust particles.”</p>
<p>Even though Cziczo and Zawadowicz’s research has cast more shade over the existence of a “Whoville,” they say&nbsp;their work has just begun.</p>
<p>“So now that we have an understanding of what it [bioaerosol presence in the atmosphere] looks like, and we have some field data to say how abundant it is in different seasons at different locations, the question is: Are the models getting that correct?” says Cziczo, who has plans to collaborate with EAPS Senior Research Scientist&nbsp;<a href="http://climate-science.mit.edu/people/wangc" target="_blank">Chien Wang</a>&nbsp;and <a href="http://climate-science.mit.edu/people/heald" target="_blank">Colette Heald</a> associate professor in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with a joint appointment in EAPS, both of whom also investigate and model aerosol and climate impacts. Says Cziczo, “We’re going to be looking at working with them in the future and seeing if we can mesh all of this data — the laboratory data, the field data, and the models together.”</p>
Graduate student Maria Zawadowicz is researching the interrelationship of particulate matter and cloud formation in the Cziczo Lab.Photo: Kent DaytonSchool of Science, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Climate, EAPS, Machine learning, ResearchBatteries that “drink” seawater could power long-range underwater vehicleshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/batteries-drink-seawater-long-range-autonomous-underwater-vehicles-0615
Startup’s novel aluminum batteries increase the range of UUVs tenfold.Thu, 15 Jun 2017 11:00:00 -0400Rob Matheson | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/batteries-drink-seawater-long-range-autonomous-underwater-vehicles-0615<p>The long range of airborne drones helps them perform critical tasks in the skies. Now MIT spinout Open Water Power (OWP) aims to greatly improve the range of unpiloted underwater vehicles (UUVs), helping them better perform in a range of applications under the sea.</p>
<p>Recently acquired by major tech firm L3 Technologies, OWP has developed a novel aluminum-water power system that’s safer and more durable, and that gives UUVs a tenfold increase in range over traditional lithium-ion batteries used for the same applications.</p>
<p>The power systems could find a wide range of uses, including helping UUVs dive deeper, for longer periods of time, into the ocean’s abyss to explore ship wreckages, map the ocean floor, and conduct research. They could also be used for long-range oil prospecting out at sea and various military applications.</p>
<p>With the acquisition, OWP now aims to ramp up development of its power systems, not just for UUVs, but also for various ocean-floor monitoring systems, sonar buoy systems, and other marine-research devices.</p>
<p>OWP is currently working with the U.S. Navy to replace batteries in acoustic sensors designed to detect enemy submarines. This summer, the startup will launch a pilot with Riptide Autonomous Solutions, which will use the UUVs for underwater surveys. Currently, Riptide’s UUVs travel roughly 100 nautical miles in one go, but the company hopes OWP can increase that distance to 1,000 nautical miles.</p>
<p>“Everything people want to do underwater should get a lot easier,” says co-inventor <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2011/student-profile-mckay">Ian Salmon McKay</a> ’12, SM ’13, who co-founded OWP with fellow mechanical engineering graduate Thomas Milnes PhD ’13 and <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2015/student-profile-ruaridh-macdonald-0902">Ruaridh Macdonald</a> '12, SM '14, who will earn his PhD in nuclear engineering this year. “We’re off to conquer the oceans.”</p>
<p><strong>“Drinking” sea water for power</strong></p>
<p>Most UUVs use lithium-based batteries, which have several issues. They’re known to catch fire, for one thing, so UUV-sized batteries are generally not shippable by air. Also, their energy density is limited, meaning expensive service ships chaperone UUVs to sea, recharging the batteries as necessary. And the batteries need to be encased in expensive metal pressure vessels. In short, they’re rather short-lived and unsafe.</p>
<p>In contrast, OWP’s power system is safer, cheaper, and longer-lasting. It consists of a alloyed aluminum, a cathode alloyed with a combination of elements (primarily nickel), and an alkaline electrolyte that’s positioned between the electrodes.</p>
<p>When a UUV equipped with the power system is placed in the ocean, sea water is pulled into the battery, and is split at the cathode into hydroxide anions and hydrogen gas. The hydroxide anions interact with the aluminum anode, creating aluminum hydroxide and releasing electrons. Those electrons travel back toward the cathode, donating energy to a circuit along the way to begin the cycle anew. Both the aluminum hydroxide and hydrogen gas are jettisoned as harmless waste.</p>
<p>Components are only activated when flooded with water. Once the aluminum anode corrodes, it can be replaced at low cost.</p>
<p>Think of the power system as type of underwater engine, where water is the oxidizer feeding the chemical reactions, instead of the air used by car engines, McKay says. “Our power system can drink sea water and discard waste products,” he says. “But that exhaust is not harmful, compared to exhaust of terrestrial engines.”</p>
<p>With the aluminum-based power system, UUVs can launch from shore and don’t need service ships, opening up new opportunities and dropping costs. With oil prospecting, for example, UUVs currently used to explore the Gulf of Mexico need to hug the shores, covering only a few pipeline assets. OWP-powered UUVs could cover hundreds of miles and return before needing a new power system, covering all available pipeline assets.</p>
<p>Consider also the Malaysian Airlines crash in 2014, where UUVs were recruited to search areas that were infeasible for equipment on the other vessels, McKay says. “In looking for the debris, a sizeable amount of the power budget for missions like that is used descending to depth and ascending back to the surface, so their working time on the sea floor is very limited,” he says. “Our power system will improve on that.”</p>
<p><strong>Nailing the design</strong></p>
<p>The OWP technology started as the co-founders’ side project, which was modified throughout two MIT classes and a lab. In 2011, McKay joined 2.013/2.014 (Engineering System Design/Development) taught by MIT professor of mechanical engineering Douglas Hart, a seasoned hardware entrepreneur who co-founded <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2013/brontes-technologies-0821">Brontes Technologies</a> and Lantos Technologies. Milnes, who was previously a systems engineer at Brontes and co-founded <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2014/3-d-scanning-with-your-smartphone-0131">Viztu Technologies</a>, was Hart’s teaching assistant.</p>
<p>The class was charged with developing an alternate power source for UUVs. McKay gambled on an energy-dense but challenging element: aluminum. One major challenge with aluminum batteries is that certain chemical issues make it difficult to donate electrons to a circuit. Additionally, the product of the reactions, the aluminum hydroxide, sticks to the electrode’s surface, inhibiting further reaction. Continuing the work in 10.625 (Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage), taught by materials science Professor Yang Shao-Horn, the W. M. Keck Professor of Energy, McKay was able to overcome the first challenge by making a gallium-rich alloyed aluminum anode that successfully donated electrons, but it corroded very quickly.</p>
<p>Seeing potential in the battery, Milnes joined McKay in further developing the battery as a side project. The two briefly moved operations to the lab of Evelyn Wang, the Gail E. Kendall Professor of Mechanical Engineering. There, they began developing electrolytes and alloys that inhibit parasitic corrosion processes and prevent that aluminum hydroxide layer from forming on the anode.</p>
<p>Setting up shop at Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 2013 — where the company still operates with about 10 employees — OWP further refined the power system’s design. Today, that power system uses a pump to circulate the electrolyte, scooping up unwanted aluminum hydroxide on the anode and dumping it onto a custom precipitation trap. When saturated, the traps with the waste are ejected and replaced automatically. The electrolyte prevents marine organisms from growing inside the power system.</p>
<p>Now OWP’s chief science officer, McKay says the startup owes much of its success to MIT’s atmosphere of innovation, where many of his professors readily offered technical and entrepreneurial advice and allowed him to work on extracurricular projects.</p>
<p>“It takes a village,” McKay says. “Those classes and that lab are where the idea took shape. People at MIT were doing strong science for science’s sake, but everyone was keenly aware of the possibility of bringing technologies to market. People were always having those great ‘What if?’ conversations — I probably had three to four different startup ideas in various stages of gestation at any given time, and so did all my friends. It was an environment that encouraged the playful exchange of ideas, and encouraged people to take on side projects with real prizes in mind.”</p>
Open Water Power’s battery that "drinks" in sea water to operate is safer and cheaper, and provides a tenfold increase in range, over traditional lithium-ion batteries used for unpiloted underwater vehicles. The power system consists of an alloyed aluminum anode, an alloyed cathode, and an alkaline electrolyte positioned between the electrodes. Components are only activated when flooded with water. Once the aluminum anode corrodes, it can be replaced at low cost.
Courtesy of Open Water PowerSchool of Engineering, Mechanical engineering, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E), Startups, Alumni/ae, Oceanography and ocean engineering, Drones, Autonomous vehicles, Security studies and military, Oil and gas, Batteries, Energy, Energy storagePeatlands, already dwindling, could face further losseshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/peatlands-already-dwindling-could-face-further-losses-0612
Climate change could damage the fragile zones, causing major carbon emissions.Mon, 12 Jun 2017 14:55:52 -0400David Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/peatlands-already-dwindling-could-face-further-losses-0612<p>Tropical peat swamp forests, which once occupied large swaths of Southeast Asia and other areas, provided a significant “sink” that helped remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But such forests have been disappearing fast due to clear-cutting and drainage projects making way for plantations. Now, research shows peatlands face another threat, as climate change alters rainfall patterns, potentially destroying even forested peatlands that remain undrained.</p>
<p>The net result is that these former carbon sinks, which have taken greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, are now net carbon sources, instead accelerating the planet’s warming.</p>
<p>The findings are described this week in the journal <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, in a paper by MIT Professor Charles Harvey, research scientist Alexander Cobb, and seven others at MIT and other institutions.</p>
<p>“There is a tremendous amount of peatland in Southeast Asia, but almost all of it has been deforested,” says Harvey, who is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and has been doing research on that region for several years. Once deforested and drained, the peatland dries out, and the organic (carbon-containing) soil oxidizes and returns to the atmosphere. Sometimes the exposed peat can actually catch fire and burn for extended periods, causing massive clouds of air pollution.</p>
<p>Tropical peatlands may contain as much carbon as the amount consumed in nearly a decade of global fossil fuel use, and raging peat fires in Indonesia alone have been estimated in some years to contribute 10 to 40 percent as much greenhouse gas to the atmosphere as all the world’s fossil fuel burning. Tropical peatlands, unlike those in temperate zones that are dominated by sphagnum moss, are forested with trees that can tower to 150 feet, and peat fires can sometimes ignite forest fires that consume these as well. (Peat that gets buried and compressed underground is the material that ultimately turns to coal).</p>
<div class="cms-placeholder-content-video"></div>
<p>Harvey and his team have found one of the last undisturbed tropical peat forests, in the nation of Brunei on the island of Borneo. “We found this site that still has peat growing,” he says, partly because that petroleum-rich nation has been able to resist the economic draw of the palm-oil market. “It is remarkable how much the peat forests are just gone everywhere else.”</p>
<p>By studying this undisturbed tract, he says, the researchers were able to see how peatlands function under normal conditions, to provide a baseline for better understanding as the lands change. “The long-term motivator for this work,” he says, is that “if we could understand how these peat forests actually accumulate peat, maybe we could preserve some of them or regenerate peat forest on damaged land.”</p>
<p>In order to get accurate ongoing measurements of conditions in the peatland, from the water table on up to the forest canopy, the team built an observation tower by taking sections of old, kilometer-long oil pipeline and pounding them vertically deep into the soft ground. Getting into the site from the coast to collect data and maintain the facility required a long boat trip along a crocodile-inhabited river followed by an hours-long trek through the forest.</p>
<p>When peatland forests are cut down and drained, the water table in the area drops. But most of these peatlands, Harvey says, “are pretty close to sea level. By midcentury, that land may be lost” due to sea-level rise. Encroachment of saltwater into peatland that had formerly been saturated with freshwater could kill off trees and other vegetation. In addition, changes in rainfall patterns that may occur as a result of climate change — with rainfall more concentrated in rainy and dry seasons rather than evenly distributed — could kill off many of the trees that dominate these lands.</p>
<p>The study revealed significant aspects of the way peatlands form and grow that could be important for evaluating future effects of climate change or land-use changes. For example, they found that the peat forms domes whose growth is greatest at the center and tapers off toward the edges. That means that if measurements of peat accumulation were taken near the center and used to extrapolate an overall accumulation rate, that could result in a severe overestimate of that area’s ability to sequester greenhouse gases.</p>
<p>The team obtained these results by constructing a quantitative model for the balance of carbon uptake (due to photosynthesis) and carbon loss (due to microbial respiration of the peat soil). When these fluxes are balanced, the peatland is at equilibrium, neither growing nor subsiding. Photosynthetic productivity of peat swamp forests is relatively constant, but the net loss of carbon from the underlying peat depends strongly on the depth of the water table, which rises and falls with rainfall and discharge from the peatland into rivers. The new study describes how peatlands evolve toward a specific dome-shaped topography that sheds water to rivers at a rate such that the carbon loss matches the carbon uptake, and the peatland reaches a stable shape.</p>
<p>This particular peat forest, Harvey says, has an upper canopy made up almost entirely of one species of 150-foot trees, known as <em>Shorea albida</em>, with other species about half that height making up a second, lower canopy. Those trees bore seeds two years ago, he says, but nobody knows how often they do so, and some species can go multiple decades between seed-producing years, so there’s no way to know how long it may take for these peatlands to expand or regenerate.</p>
<p>“This is a very important paper,” says Nigel Roulet, a professor of biogeoscience and chair of the Department of Geography at McGill University in Montreal, who was not involved in this work. “It’s a paper that will help with the development of management strategies for one of the last great carbon deposits in the world that we want to keep out of the atmosphere.”</p>
<p>Roulet points out that “one-third of all the carbon that has gone into the atmosphere since the 1700s is from land-use change,” at locations including these tropical peat lands, which contain “so much carbon that it’s globally significant.” Figuring out how to restore such tropical peatlands, which requires understanding how they form and grow, is key to trying to reverse some of these changes, he says.</p>
<p>The research team included graduate student Alison Hoyt at MIT, Laure Gandois at the University of Toulouse, Jangarun Erl of the Forestry Department in Brunei, Rene Dommain of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Kamariah Abu Salim of the University of Brunei Darussalam, Fuu Ming Kai of the Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (where lead-author Cobb is now based), and Hur Sallah Haji Su’ut of the Brunei Darussalam Heart of Borneo Center. The work was supported the National Research Foundation Singapore through the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, the Environmental Solutions Initiative at MIT, and the National Science Foundation.</p>
Researchers have found one of the last undisturbed tropical peat forests, in the nation of Brunei on the island of Borneo. Photo: Courtesy of the researchersResearch, School of Engineering, Civil and environmental engineering, Climate change, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Environment, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Carbon, National Science Foundation (NSF)MIT Technology and Policy Program’s Best Thesis for 2017 maps out a clean energy future for Indiahttps://news.mit.edu/2017/technology-and-policy-program-best-thesis-arun-singh-maps-clean-energy-future-for-india-0607
Award-winning paper by Arun Singh shows how one of the world’s fastest-growing economies can expand its energy consumption while limiting emissions.Wed, 07 Jun 2017 15:10:01 -0400Mark Dwortzan | Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Changehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/technology-and-policy-program-best-thesis-arun-singh-maps-clean-energy-future-for-india-0607<p>As the world’s second fastest-growing major economy and third largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, India is at a crossroads.</p>
<p>Intent on raising its standard of living and extending reliable access to electricity to the nearly 19 percent of its citizens who lack it, India is expected to more than double its energy consumption by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.&nbsp;At the same time, the nation has pledged to make reductions in greenhouse gas emissions intensity (the ratio of carbon dioxide&nbsp;emissions produced&nbsp;to gross domesting product) as specified in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate. Achieving these seemingly conflicting goals will require energy technologies and policies that are both economically viable and efficient at cutting emissions.</p>
<p>That's why&nbsp;<a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/about-us/personnel/singh-arun" target="_blank">Arun Singh</a>, a master’s degree student in the Institute for Data, Systems and Society’s Technology and Policy Program (TPP), decided to help India's decision makers weigh their options. Singh, who is also a fellow of the Tata Center for Technology and Design and a research assistant in the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, has analyzed climate policy options for India by building and applying a model of the Indian economy with detailed representation of the electricity sector.</p>
<p>Developed with his advisors, MIT Sloan School of Management Assistant Professor&nbsp;Valerie Karplus&nbsp;and MIT Joint Program Principal Research Scientist&nbsp;Niven Winchester, the model enables researchers to gauge the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of different technology and policy choices designed to transition India to a low-carbon energy system. Singh used the model to assess the economic, energy, and emissions impacts of implementing India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement — which aims to reduce carbon dioxide&nbsp;emissions intensity by 33 to 35 percent from 2005 levels&nbsp;and increase non-fossil based electric power to about 40 percent of installed capacity by 2030.</p>
<p>Singh determined that compared to a reference scenario of no policy constraints, an economy-wide emissions intensity reduction policy (simulated as a carbon price) would cost at least 43 times less per ton of carbon dioxide&nbsp;than a mandated expansion of non-fossil-based electric power capacity. He also found that an economy-wide emissions-intensity reduction policy would also reduce carbon dioxide&nbsp;emissions in all sectors of the economy, whereas a non-fossil mandate in the electric power sector would lead to increased emissions beyond that sector.</p>
<p>These findings appear in Singh’s <a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/publication/16689" target="_blank">master’s thesis</a>, “Clean Development Pathways for India: Evaluating Feasibility and Modeling Impact of Policy Options,” which was awarded the honor of being the TPP's best master’s thesis for 2017.</p>
<p>“Arun’s thesis stands out because it goes beyond modeling policy options for meeting India’s climate goals to evaluating their feasibility in practice, based on an on-the-ground understanding of India’s institutions, stakeholders and technology,” Karplus says. “This combination has produced results that are likely to be both relevant and actionable for policymakers in India.”</p>
<p>Singh’s paper may also have broader application.</p>
<p>“The thesis extends a single-country modeling framework that can be used to analyze the impacts of policies consistent with the Paris Agreement in other countries,” Winchester says.</p>
<p>Singh’s model projects that achieving India’s NDC emissions intensity target with a so-called pure&nbsp;carbon pricing policy (in which no additional targets are set to expand non-fossil electric power capacity) would require a price of $17.40 per metric ton of carbon dioxide. Because&nbsp;this is a higher carbon price than what’s been implemented in most developed countries, Singh acknowledges the political intractability of such a policy. If a carbon pricing policy were combined with enforcement of non-fossil electric power capacity targets, the carbon price would go down to $2.06, but consumers would face higher commodity prices resulting from more expensive utilities. However, declining wind and solar costs in the future could lead to lower utility prices, making a hybrid carbon pricing/electric power capacity expansion policy a viable option to meet India’s electric power demand and climate goals.</p>
<p>Singh <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2016/arun-singh-inform-indias-climate-policy-choices-1116" target="_self">shared preliminary findings</a> from his research on clean energy development pathways for India last November as a panelist for a side event of COP22, the 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Marrakech, Morocco. He was the only graduate student among nine speakers on the panel, which explored strategies to implement the Paris Agreement. &nbsp;</p>
<p>“With this modeling endeavor, we aim to provide policymakers in India with a tool that they can use to assess the impacts of proposed climate policies,” says Singh, who will receive a master of science degree in technology and policy at Commencement this week.</p>
<p>Upon graduation, Singh plans to continue working with Karplus and Winchester on expanding the model’s capabilities and developing collaborations with policymaking bodies in India.</p>
Solar panels cover the roof of the CII-Godrej Green Business Center in Hyderabad, India.Photo courtesy of the Natural Resources Defense CouncilResearch, Climate, India, Carbon, Alternative energy, Climate change, Development, Economics, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, MIT Energy Initiative, Renewable energy, Tata Center, IDSS, Sloan School of Management, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, School of Engineering, Students, Graduate, postdoctoralLetter regarding US withdrawal from Paris climate agreementhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/letter-mit-community-us-withdrawal-paris-climate-agreement-0602
Fri, 02 Jun 2017 17:24:04 -0400MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/letter-mit-community-us-withdrawal-paris-climate-agreement-0602<p><em>The following email was sent today to the MIT community by President L. Rafael Reif.</em></p>
<p>To the members of the MIT community,</p>
<p>Yesterday, the White House took the position that the Paris climate agreement — a landmark effort to combat global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions — was a bad deal for America. Other nations have made clear that the deal is not open to renegotiation. And unfortunately, there is no negotiating with the scientific facts.</p>
<p>I believe all of us have a responsibility to stand up for concerted global action to combat and adapt to climate change.</p>
<p>At MIT, we take great care to get the science right. The scientific consensus is overwhelming: As human activity emits more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the global average surface temperature will continue to rise, driving rising sea levels and extreme weather.</p>
<p>Global warming is not a distant problem — not distant in time or space. Communities across the United States and around the world are already experiencing the impacts. Without immediate and concerted action, the damaging consequences will grow worse. As the Pentagon describes it, climate change is a “threat multiplier,” because its direct effects intensify other challenges, including mass migrations and zero-sum conflicts over existential resources like water and food. In short, global warming and its consequences present risks too grave to gamble with.</p>
<p>A global problem demands a global solution. With the Paris Agreement, for the first time in history, 190+ nations agreed to work together to do something about it. In signing it, the U.S. was acting in concert with other nations, with the U.S. setting its own level of carbon reductions. The truth is that unless every nation joins in the solution, every nation will join in the suffering.</p>
<p>To solve this global problem, we must transform the global energy status quo. The Paris Agreement is an important beginning: a mechanism that drives progress on emissions right away and speeds up progress over time. (Incidentally, MIT announced its own greenhouse gas reduction goal in October 2015, a month before the Paris conference, with our <a href="http://inj9.mjt.lu/lnk/AEoAAIfTZfcAAAAZDcoAAAA80K8AAAAAGqoAAA91AAiQzwBZMdxscrfHgkTERDCk_0yZtg5LHwAIIWc/1/kOLk0umX0NjoWAnkSmvRzg/aHR0cDovL2NsaW1hdGVhY3Rpb24ubWl0LmVkdS9yZXBvcnRz">Plan for Action on Climate Change</a>, which commits us to reducing our campus emissions at least 32 percent by 2030.) With this running start, humanity has time to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. But the longer we hesitate, the lower the odds of success; the carbon dioxide our cars and power plants emit today will linger in the atmosphere for a thousand years.</p>
<p>Climate change arguably represents the greatest threat of this generation. Fortunately, it also represents a tremendous opportunity. Already, hundreds of thousands of Americans work in the clean energy sector, and growth in clean energy jobs is rising fast: In 2016 alone, solar industry employment grew by 25 percent, while wind jobs grew 32 percent. As a nation, if we choose to invest in the relevant research, we have the opportunity to continue to lead, developing new energy technologies that will generate high-value exports and high-quality American jobs — the jobs of the future. That is in no way to minimize the disruption that the changing energy economy will cause to some workers and regions. But the solution to that problem is not to deny scientific facts and give away economic opportunity. If we don’t seize this chance, other nations certainly will. By withdrawing from the Paris accord, the U.S. is surrendering leadership in a priceless global market.</p>
<p>I am encouraged, however, to see so much leadership at the state and city level, in industry and at universities — here in Massachusetts and nationwide.</p>
<p>Time and again, this country has risen to civilizational challenges with a sense of optimism, creativity and drive. I hope that the people of the United States will — as a matter of service to the nation and the world — continue to take the lead in pursuing a carbon-free future.</p>
<p>In this work, the people of MIT have a special role to play. I look forward to working with you as we step up to the challenge.</p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>L. Rafael Reif</p>
Administration, Climate, Climate change, Sustainability, Global Warming, Letters to the Community, President L. Rafael ReifMIT issues statement regarding research on Paris Agreementhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-issues-statement-research-paris-agreement-0602
Fri, 02 Jun 2017 10:27:29 -0400MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-issues-statement-research-paris-agreement-0602<p><em>MIT issued the following statement on Thursday, June 1 2017.</em></p>
<p>A set of talking points circulated in support of President Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement included this statement:</p>
<p>“The [Paris] deal also accomplishes LITTLE for the climate</p>
<p>“According to researchers at MIT, if all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible. The impacts have been estimated to be likely to reduce global temperature rise by less than 0.2 degrees Celsius in 2100.”</p>
<p>The researchers in MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change who led the relevant analysis find this statement to be misleading, for two reasons.&nbsp;</p>
<p>First, the 0.2 degree-figure used in the talking point reflects the incremental impact of the Paris Agreement compared with the earlier Copenhagen agreement. &nbsp;If you instead compare the impact of the Paris Agreement to no climate policy, then the temperature reduction is much larger, on the order of 1 degree Celsius — 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit — by 2100. This would be a significant reduction in the global temperature rise, though much more is needed if the world is to achieve its goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less.</p>
<p>Second, the analysis accounts only for countries’ pledges under the Paris Agreement, assuming no further strengthening of the commitments in years after 2030. The Paris Agreement is a milestone of the ongoing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is committed to ongoing annual meetings to regularly revisit and ratchet up nations’ climate goals, making them more ambitious over time.</p>
<p>The relevant MIT researchers believe that the Paris Agreement is an unprecedented and vital effort by nearly 200 countries to respond to the urgent threat of global climate change.</p>
Administration, Climate, Climate change, Sustainability, Global WarmingUnderstanding anthropogenic effects on space weatherhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/anthropogenic-effects-of-space-weather-0531
New research from MIT Haystack Observatory reviews the ways in which human activity affects space weather around Earth. Wed, 31 May 2017 18:10:01 -0400Haystack Observatoryhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/anthropogenic-effects-of-space-weather-0531<p>Effects of human behavior are not limited to Earth's climate or atmosphere; they are also seen in the natural space weather surrounding our planet. "Space weather" in this context includes conditions in the space surrounding Earth, including the magnetosphere, ionosphere, and thermosphere.</p>
<p>A recent survey by a team of scientists including Phil Erickson, assistant director of MIT Haystack Observatory, has resulted in an <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-017-0357-5" target="_blank">article</a> in the journal <em>Space Science Reviews</em>. The study provides a comprehensive review of anthropogenic, or human-caused, space weather impacts, including some recent findings using NASA's <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/van-allen-probes" target="_blank">Van Allen Probes</a> twin spacecraft.</p>
<p>As space scientist James Van Allen discovered in the 1950s and 1960s, two radiation belts surround Earth with a slot&nbsp;between them. The inner edge of the outer Van Allen radiation belt is particularly interesting, as it is composed of high-energy "killer" electrons that have the potential to permanently damage spacecraft. Tracking the inner edge of the radiation belt is important for GPS navigation, communication, and other satellite-based systems to help protect them from this naturally occurring radiation.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Until recently, it was thought that the inner edge of the outer belt was under nearly all conditions located at the plasmapause, the outer boundary of cold, dense plasma surrounding Earth that is produced daily by the sun's extreme ultraviolet rays. During geomagnetic storms, extra energy from solar flares and coronal mass ejections interact with and compress the plasmasphere. Scientists originally thought that under these conditions, the inner edge of the outer Van Allen belt would contract with the compression of the plasmasphere and move closer to Earth.</p>
<p>Research using the Van Allen Probes has discovered instead that during particularly intense geomagnetic storms, the inner edge of the outer belt does not follow suit but instead keeps its distance from the Earth, holding off the inner extent of "killer electrons" possessing damage potential. This inner limit to high-energy electrons occurs at the edge of strong human-origin radio transmissions created for a very different purpose.</p>
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<p>Strong very low frequency (VLF) radio waves have been used for nearly a century to communicate with submarines, as they penetrate seawater well. But in addition to traveling through the ocean, the VLF waves also propagate upward along magnetic field lines and form a "bubble" of VLF transmissions, reaching to about the same spot that the ultra-relativistic electrons seem to stop during superstorms. The communications signals can interact with and remove some of these high-energy particles through loss to our atmosphere. This new understanding implies that human-origin systems can have an unexpected effect on high-energy space weather around our planet during these unusual, intense storms in space.</p>
<p>The <em>Space Science Reviews</em> survey also explores a more direct effect caused by humans on the near-Earth space environment. High-altitude nuclear detonation tests during the Cold War also affected the near-Earth environment by creating long-lasting artificial radiation belts that disrupted power grids and satellite transmissions. Such tests are now banned: In particular, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty — signed by all nuclear powers at the time — specifically prohibits nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere. However, a large body of information on the effects of these atmospheric tests exists, and the article examines these historical nuclear explosions to further study of anthropogenic effects on space weather.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Understanding human-origin space weather under these extreme conditions allows us to greatly enhance our knowledge of natural effects and allows essential engineering and scientific work aimed at protecting the planet's ground-based and satellite technology. “Nuclear atmospheric tests were a human-generated and extreme example of some of the space weather effects frequently caused by the sun,” says Erickson. “If we understand what happened in the somewhat controlled and definitely extreme conditions caused by one of these man-made events, and combine it with studies into longer term effects such as the VLF communications 'bubble,' we can more readily advance our knowledge and prediction of natural variations in the near-space environment.”</p>
<p>The work highlights the importance of continuing research into space weather — both naturally occurring effects and those influenced by human behavior — as an essential part of society's advance toward a more complex, spacefaring society.</p>
Artist's depiction of NASA's Van Allen Probes, with the Van Allen radiation belts rendered in false color for visibilityImage: NASAResearch, Space, astronomy and planetary science, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Haystack Observatory